Locker Room: Maybe this theory is as wrong as a plateful of wrong pie, perhaps it's as crazy as taking the Red Cow roundabout when you're in a hurry, maybe it's as mismatched as thick grey socks with sandals on a summer's day. If so we hereby bow our head and wait for the words of admonition that will come from on high, writes Tom Humhpries.

Anyway, here goes. Shouldn't big matches be allowed have their own momentum. Shouldn't there be a drum roll that goes on for a week or two and a sense of mounting excitement and anticipation, that boyish longing for when Saturday comes.

Saturday at Lansdowne Road was as listless as the week that preceded it. The FAI, bless it, has gone control mad. The prophylactic of public relations blocks off all real experience. The team spend the week before games in such cloistered isolation in Portmarnock that the sky above has become a no-fly zone for butterflies. The clamorous flapping of their wings distracts the players from their hushed contemplations. The hotel lobby has a quiet reading-room atmosphere and people move about and speak in whispers. The team exist like an enclosed order, coming downstairs only for vespers and victuals.

Press access is limited and controlled by men in nice suits who deal with us simple hacks like doctors dealing with addicts. They give us stuff that feels the same as news but isn't news. "We will provide two players for interview today but understand that those two players have to do you all till Thursday."

On the day in question last week one of the players was Colin Healy. Colin is a genuinely nice young man but he is to good copy what Roddy Collins is to crippling shyness. A complete stranger. Colin never uses two words where one will do. He is opposed on principle to anecdotes. Press conferences are torture for him. Last week those who audit such things were able to tell us that Colin had used the word "obviously" 92 times in the course of his interrogation. That's an index of his nervousness.

For afters we had Clinton Morrison - another goodfella. Clinton's press conferences are like candy floss. Big, exciting looking, instantly gratifying, but then when you get back home and play the tape and the one-liners don't translate to print you feel curiously undernourished. Nobody's fault. Just the medium.

And that was about it. Brian Kerr is quietly amused by the allegation he is a football conservative but his press conferences these days are a heavily censored version of his old live show. He passes through the occasion like a man picking his way through a minefield. No careless answers, nothing that may be taken and strung across the back page of a tabloid like dirty washing or a red rag to the opposition.

That's his job and Brian does it well, better than well, but the argument here is that extreme caution is the enemy of hype and in what I like to call the "modern game" hype is like oxygen to players. They are not chess grandmasters. They don't mull over every move. They yearn for a bit of excitement and fuss. The big time is no use unless it feels like the big time.

So the week of "hype" involved a stingy selection of the blandest of quotes doled out to as many media people as possible, a series of training sessions, the bulk of which were held in camera so nobody bothered to go because it means being thrown out as soon as you get there.

And when Saturday finally came and the boys were allowed out of study hall, they found that Lansdowne Road had about as much spontaneity to it as a piece of Pat Kenny patter. The only thing genuine in Lansdowne these days is the dereliction. As a ground it's an organic slum.

Everything else there these days though is synthetic passion. "Let's all make the biggest tricolour Lansdowne Road has ever seen." "Let's all sing along." "Let's all wave our national league flags." "Here comes that football song You'll Never Walk Alone, why not sing along."

Sadly, Lansdowne Road just now has a lot of the prawn-sandwich ethos about it.

It gets a little noisy but it doesn't rock with passion. You hear exasperated punters say things like, "Oh, come on guys. Get real. Shape up or ship out."

When the GAA eventually allows the odd soccer match to be played at Croker it will be a good thing for two reasons. The rent money will buy a hell of a lot of hurleys and coaches; and the increased capacity might once again open up to what Brian Kerr calls the "ordinary shammer" the possibility of going to see Ireland play. Then we'll get the passion back.

Anyway, back to the main argument. Having prepared in a bubble, the team come to Lansdowne and perform in front of the bespoke suits and the jaded attitudes. The public imagination hasn't been caught by the build-up and passing through the turnstile doesn't make the customer automatically lusty for success.

On the great days, what has made Irish successes truly national occasions is the notion that we are all riding along on the same cloud of passion and patriotism. In Chiba, during the World Cup, there was an Irish beer garden next door to the team hotel. Punters flocked and thronged to the training sessions. In Parsippany, New Jersey in 1994, the build-up to the Italian match was like a big wedding reception, drunks and well-wishers everywhere.

I wasn't in Italy for the 1990 World Cup or Germany for the breakthrough shenanigans but I have an impression of a great snaking caravan of Irishness with the team at the top of it, relishing their difference, their uniqueness, their native genius for the unplanned moment.

Irish teams have always ridden along on an improbable wave of mad optimism, they have always fed off the connection with the public. That can't be artificially produced, can't be switched on and off like a light. If the team grows as remote as a boy band the audience will become as fickle.

Everything was right for us on Saturday. The stakes were high, the pitch was perfect, we were at home and on a roll. We played like computer programmers though. Like air traffic controllers. We played carefully and scientifically and in a way that suggested our qualifications.

And the Russians smiled because it is a game with which they are familiar. They lapped it up, conceded a goal from a deflection, punished our mistake soon afterwards. We never scared them. We never went at them in mad, unrelenting waves. The Russians never looked at each other and thought these guys would happily die for whatever crazy cause they believe in.

We need lots of things. A creative midfielder would be a godsend. Another striker too, but Brian Kerr is always keen to emphasise it's best to worry about the things you can actually change.

Well, to paraphrase Mae West, it's not the men in our life that's the problem right now it's the life in our men. There's nothing to fear. Open up. Put the fun back. Bring back passion.