Sideline Cut/Keith Duggan The final pity was that Mick McCarthy waited long enough to hear the voices of the people. Until the low and plaintive chorus of boos rose over Lansdowne Road in the minutes after the loss against Switzerland last month, he could not have guessed at how terrible and unforgettable it would sound.

Whatever his faults, he deserved a better keepsake for his farewell night at Lansdowne Road than that. But at least he was sure. McCarthy has always placed a heavy faith in the voice of the public and with the rejection, he was convinced. It was over. After two decades of Lansdowne stories as a player and manager, it was, as Tony Soprano would say, a f**k of a way for it all to end. But as the FAI treasurer, John Delaney, pointed out on Wednesday night, that's football.

Jack Charlton gauged it better. For Charlton, it had also been one campaign too many but the affection was still there. Remember that night in Anfield late in 1995 when the Dutch took Big Jack's blunt and inflexible philosophy of the game and tore it up in front of him? Not long after kick-off it became clear that the match would be less a competitive play-off fixture and more of an elegy, a wake for Big Jack. Patrick Kluivert destroyed the Irish defence in the rain and afterwards, Jack moved funereally towards the old Kop End to acknowledge the keening fans under the Tricolours. He looked pleased and also a bit confused, like an old trumpet player who still loved the sounds but couldn't keep up with the pace of the music anymore.

He dithered for a month before being unceremoniously called before the FAI to be informed it was all over. But in terms of the fans, he knew how and when to accept the encore.

In a fairer world, McCarthy would have been afforded the same sort of sentimental hero worship. Instead he was forced to make do with an embarrassing and scarcely sincere round of applause from the very press men with whom he had become utterly disillusioned and who had ushered him towards the exit doors.

True, McCarthy had less folksy charisma than Big Jack and arrived in Ireland at a crossing point in terms of the psyche of the country. By the mid-1990s, participation at major soccer tournaments was regarded as more of a birthright than a fantastic cause for celebration. The idea of being led on merry escapades around the world by a straight-talking Geordie who spoke like an extra from Last of the Summer Wine, an English folk hero at that, appealed to the Irish sense of humour and willing incredulity. Mick never really inspired that.

But overall, McCarthy arguably did a better job than his predecessor given his initial resources and but for wretched luck could have qualified for more than one major tournament.

So his exit was inglorious and ill-deserved. It was also inevitable. The feeling here has always been that McCarthy's position as Irish manager was untenable as soon as he lost Roy Keane. The cold fact remains there was a failure to deliver Ireland's best player onto the field of play just a week before Ireland's biggest tournament in almost a decade. It was a massive and irrevocable mistake. It was like kicking John Lennon out of the Beatles. Keane may have been stony and intransigent and self-righteous through the summer drama but he has always been consistent in his belief and account of what happened. Keane responded primarily to his deepest convictions. McCarthy responded primarily to his feelings.

HE was hurt and he wielded his power rashly and with poor judgment. In all the thousands of arguments and theories about the most seismic clash of egos since Kane tangled with Abel, nobody has answered this. If what Roy Keane said to McCarthy was so shocking and unforgivable it demanded his immediate banishment, that it required his removal from the squad, then how come a simple phone call from Keane, a hollow apology, would have been enough to facilitate his reinstatement a few days later?

From that hour forward, McCarthy was always on borrowed time. At least the gods gave him a decent, if hardly flawless, tournament to savour as the high point of his career. The penalty drama and tears against Spain provided a temporary reprieve but that afternoon and the Joe Duffy Welcome Home Party were really just hot gas. We are an emotional, sappy race of people and lose the run of ourselves when presented with a touch of well-dressed pathos. We are also, of course, notorious begrudgers.

The only way McCarthy could win was to keep winning and the cold winds of autumn chased away the bit of luck he had enjoyed against Holland and against Germany. The FAI, never slow to run with the wolves, persuaded Mick to do the honourable thing without having to explain why a man they were convinced was right for the next two years was suddenly wrong after two months.

Mick is young and will recover. He will learn that the cult of manager, the iron disciplinarian with booming voice-as-law is a conceit that football no longer bows to. It is simply too expensive. Football managers are the most disposable animal in the food chain now - just look at the ravenous pack of contenders for McCarthy's old job.

Roy Keane, will thankfully, probably play for Ireland again but Japan was to be his great stage, his Old Vic, and that he missed out on that is the great pity for him. And for all of us. Any flash of greatness he delivers in a green shirt in the months to come will be tinged with a wistful what-might-have-been.

Future Irish campaigns will most likely feature higher organisation levels and lower levels of fun. The old ways finished last week. Even the FAI must see that it is preferable to apply professional procedures to a professional entity rather than to see a repeat of the meltdown that occurred a few months ago.

Whoever takes on the new job will have a strong hand when it comes to demanding as much. In return, the FAI and probably the fans, will demand results. The honeymoon period will be shorter than ever, if it exists at all.

And only half way through the next management will we get a reasonable measure of the true highs and lows of the McCarthy era and only then will we realise how so much different, how honestly magnificent the past few months could have been.