Within hours of his arrival in Skopje yesterday, Mick McCarthy delivered the broadest hint yet that Gary Kelly will start tomorrow's critical European Championship game against Macedonia.
Asked if he would again select two out-and-out wingers as he did for the recent game in Malta, he was at pains to stress that the term should be wide players rather than specialist wingers.
That is taken to mean that Kelly will play at right wing-back leaving Mark Kennedy, Kevin Kilbane and perhaps Damien Duff to contest for the position on the opposite flank.
It would mark a welcome change of fortune for Kelly whose only Ireland start, since returning from a year-long absence through injury, was in the game against Croatia at Zagreb last month when the manager chose to rest some established players.
Now, the man who once rated as an automatic choice during the closing phase of Jack Charlton's reign, is poised to go into the starting line-up on merit alone.
"When a player has been to the bottom of the pit as he was last season, it's always a pleasure to see him come back and resume where he left off," said McCarthy.
"Gary is an exceptional player but there is always a risk that when someone is out for an entire season, he loses something in the process.
Happily, that's not been the case with him. He has had his time out. Now he's back, livelier than ever and determined to make up for his missing year. I welcome the additional options he gives me."
A couple of convincing contributions in the Premiership on his first team recall put Kelly on course for similar recognition by McCarthy. Kelly's cause has also been helped by the sequence of events which saw, first Roy Keane and then Lee Carsley withdraw from the squad and, in the process, diminish the options which the manager formerly had in the anchor row in midfield.
By playing Kelly wide on the right, he now redresses the defensive deficiencies in the line, a strategy which, if reducing the supply lines to the front men, Niall Quinn and Robbie Keane, fits McCarthy's match plan of tempering playing adventure with an admirable element of realism.
The manager steadfastly refuses to elaborate on the point, ahead of today's lunchtime announcement of his team's selection but he was markedly less reticent in stressing the substantial progress made by Kelly in recent weeks.
Apart from confirming that Steve Staunton will captain the team, he refused to be drawn into speculation on his likely formation but in that one disclosure, he effectively ruled Tottenham's Steve Carr out of his side.
Apart from the game against Yugoslavia at Lansdowne Road on September 1st, a match in which he replaced Denis Irwin in the second half, Carr has been ever present in the team since making an impressive international debut in the 2-0 win over Sweden in April.
Now, with Irwin fully recovered from his sickness problems and experience seen as central to achieving the win needed to sustain the great hope of reaching the European finals for the first time in 12 years, the Tottenham player is likely to be on the bench for the kick-off.
The initial shock of losing both Roy Keane and Carsley, has subsided and it was a relaxed McCarthy who faced the media last evening after the rapidly fading light had forced him to truncate a training session at a suburban ground some 20 kilometres outside the city centre. He was still quick to dismiss the notion, however, that relaxation in this instance approximates to complacency. "I can assure you, that the last thing on my mind just now is that we are going to have an easy ride on Saturday," he said.
"Of course, I'm positive, of course I believe we will win for there would be very little point in us being here, if I didn't. But win in a canter? Forget about it.
"I've said it before, and now that we have arrived in Skopje I don't mind repeating it, anything we get out of this game, we have to earn by sweat as well as skill."
He also cast doubt on reports that injuries could deprive Macedonia of six key players including central defenders Mitko Stojkovski and Igor Nikolovski.
"No disrespect to the Macedonians, but I am always sceptical about stories like this. But at the end of the I'm less concerned about the team they put out as the way my team plays. If they perform on the day, I think we'll win - it's as simple as that."
Meanwhile, Macedonia coach Dragan Kanatioravski is still making all the right noises. "We will win this match, not to help either Croatia or Yugoslavia but to prove that we too have a strong team," he said
"With all our players fit, I think we would have beaten Ireland for certain. Now with so many injuries I am not so sure. But I still think we are good enough to make up for our defeat in Dublin.
"Ireland have to win the game to be sure of going to the finals. They must feel that pressure. But we can play at our own pace and I think that will be the difference."
The Macedonian coach also said that the absence of Roy Keane from the Irish side, would greatly improve Macedonia's hopes of victory.
"We know what this player means to Ireland," he said. "Without him, they looked very ordinary in our first game, now I believe Ireland will miss him still more."
