In little ways, in big ways, the new regime is already making its mark, writes Tom Humphries

Although we never grow weary of the hyperbole and the headlines, sport is about unexpected things happening. We shouldn't gape so much really. Shouldn't be stilled into wonder. Yet on Saturday night, as Ireland resumed normal service with a useful and competent away win, the normality of it all seemed to underline the sheer strangeness of what we've been through.

Here we were on a stormy night when it rained knives and bottles, and still we reeled three points out of the water after a mighty struggle. We were ready to roll on to Tirana, we were speaking about how useful it would be to net six points from these few days.

And yet. No McCarthy. No Quinn. No Staunton. No Keanes. No McAteer, Finnan or Morrison. No Harte or Kellys. No Steven Reid. With three points bagged we nodded and got ready to head on. Really, we should have taken nothing for granted.

This wasn't an Irish performance of memorable beauty. Our goals were scramblers. Defenders have been shot for lesser errors than the Georgian defence committed. And we conceded a goal at the near post from a free. And let the game go for a little while on either side of that goal. Yet we won, and the temptation is to put the "Business As Usual" sign back in the window.

It's not like that. This was a win for cool smartness and, in the end, it was a win for discipline and bravery.

Factor in the elements. A new manager in his first competitive game. What's on the line for him? Lose this and the Republic for the first time in a generation have to go through the motions of playing out a qualifying series without a chance of being in at the death. Lose this and Brian Kerr stood to lose all the goodwill and excitement that confettied him when he got the job.

He had a team that had careered off the rails and over the cliff. One friendly in Scotland means nothing. Mick McCarthy's third-last match in charge was a 3-0 friendly win in Finland. The team had expired by then, but nobody noticed until Russia and Switzerland rolled us over.

And after a good start on Saturday night things went awry. The Georgians, playing in a stadium they have never lost in, playing for their considerable pride and with a few players of considerable skill and renown, equalised.

All hell broke loose. The fans were on their feet. The stadium vibrated with noise. The Georgian substitutes were tormenting us. Mick McCarthy had a phrase about the shape of things like these. Pear-shaped. Things were pear-shaped.

And you looked down at the first-time manager on his competitive debut and you expected to see some paleness, some fright, a little apoplexy. Subs warming up. Players being roared at. Referee being bawled out. Brian Kerr was leaning ruminatively against the dug-out. He looked like a man of leisure, standing under a tree till the rain stopped.

He was right. He'd done what was needed. He'd even told his players not to pay attention to him if he was tempted to distract them by shouting at them.

He'd taken steps for his midfield to hang back and cover the player the Georgians would play in the hole. He'd given his team DVDs of their performances, dossiers and info-bites on Georgian players. He'd picked the team for experience and with contingencies in mind.

If there was a temptation to play Damien Duff on the left wing and shove David Connolly into attack with Gary Doherty it was wisely resisted. John O'Shea will be a great player for Ireland and he will have great games, but on Saturday in the second half he was troubled a few times. The consequences might have been worse, but in front of him Kevin Kilbane worked like a dog with his tackling and harrying.

It would have been easy to show what a new broom can do by sweeping Gary Breen off to the bench and slipping in Andy O'Brien. After all, one has been playing Champions League while the other has been in the West Ham reserves. But would O'Brien have made that immaculate tackle at the death?

Not everything fell right for Gary Doherty either. The habits of too much centre-half play mean he doesn't burst for possession the way other big strikers do. He missed the chance to claim a legitimate penalty in the first half when, having shimmied like a giant redwood in a storm, he fell like one too, slowly, reluctantly. Ccccccccrrrrrrrrraaaaaassssshhhhhh! Kerr wanted his awkwardness though, the holes he punches for others to run through. Kerr-ching! It paid off a jackpot.

Everything has happened so quickly in the last eight or nine months for the Irish side that it is sometimes difficult to step back and understand what is happening now as the beginning of a new and separate time, rather than merely a development in a running saga. And of course this era overlaps with the end of the McCarthy era in the sense that Kerr inherited the statistic played two, lost two.

After that it's all change. Virtually every player can recount a little word here, a little word there, from Kerr during the week. Doherty had forgotten he scored against Georgia as a youth player in Sweden. Breen was grateful that what he did in Scotland last month was remembered in Tbilisi.

And the tempo has changed. The mood has changed. The team aren't barricaded against the world. There are many voices. Chris Hughton gives press conferences. Brian Kerr sits in the lobby.

The habit for two-legged trips like this has always been to evacuate the first country as soon as the first match is finished. The team flew from Iceland to Lithuania within hours of Kevin Kilbane's debut game in 1997, for instance. Instead, yesterday the team relaxed. On Saturday night Noel O'Reilly played his mandolin. Yesterday they lay in. Went to the pool. Had their walks and their massages. Today, in late afternoon after a training session, they'll fly to Tirana. No drama. No stress.

You can see the success of the new administration on the faces of those who knew only the old era. They wondered would it ever be the same. Would they feel the same way? Those frettings are gone. Confidence is growing. The feeling is that something new and interesting is blossoming. The old excitement is back.