The countdown to kick-off continues until six tomorrow evening, but the week's other great waiting game ended yesterday morning at Baldonnel where Roy Keane finally linked up with his Irish team-mates and proved his manager right by doing more than enough in the squad's run out to suggest he will start against the Iranians.

The Irish skipper took a full part in the training session and looked entirely comfortable in the practise game with which it ended, before the 24 players headed back to their nearby hotel.

"It's good to be able to stop answering questions about him," sighed Mick McCarthy an hour later when he was asked about the 30-year-old midfielder.

"But what's just as welcome is the fact that all 24 players trained this morning and that I don't think that any of them are going to have any problems between now and the game."

While McCarthy's relationship with the Manchester United player rarely looks too easy in public, the Ireland manager makes no bones about how important Keane is to his side's fortunes. Throughout the build-up to the game he has made it clear that the decision on whether he played tomorrow would come down to little more than the call of the Corkman himself. The fact that he was prepared to get so centrally involved on his first day back appears to end any speculation of how he sees the situation.

Keane's inclusion in the side means McCarthy will have to choose between Mark Kinsella and Matt Holland as Keane's partner in central midfield. If his comments yesterday are anything to go by, then Holland, like Steve Finnan at right back and Gary Breen in central defence, looks to have an edge over the opposition.

"It's inevitable that in any successful team some players come in, do well and retain their position, and others miss out through injury or suspension and then find it hard to get back in," he said.

With Holland, Breen and Finnan all having impressed when handed the opportunity to play in recent months, the manager's philosophy may mean Mark Kinsella and Gary Kelly have to settle for places on the bench, where they could be joined by Richard Dunne and Kenny Cunningham.

"I have some decisions to make," observed McCarthy, "but nothing that's troubling me too much. I'd much prefer this sort of thing to having to try to slot somebody in somewhere they don't normally play because we're short of bodies."

In attack, too, McCarthy insisted there were cases to be made for at least two combinations, and the decision appears to boil down to being between the strength and aerial power of Niall Quinn or the pace and agility of David Connolly alongside Robbie Keane.

"There's certainly a case for playing a big man and dropping the ball in to him, but then Robbie and David have always done well when they've played together too and both have been looking very sharp in training."

Some time this evening McCarthy will sit his men down and go through a video of the Iranians, but, he says, "you don't want to do more than give the lads a feel for who they are playing. We'll watch maybe 45 minutes and have a bit of a talk about them, but no more than that. We know the way we play and we don't want to strangle that by getting to wrapped up in what they are going to do.

"It's the toughest game we've had in the entire campaign because with, say, the games away to Holland and Portugal there would have been time to put things right if we'd lost. Not this time.

"We're playing what is arguably the best team in Asia, they have a good manager, several very good players and you have one of them, Ali Daei, saying that they're going to win regardless of whether Roy Keane plays or not, so they're clearly not short of confidence.

"It may be easy to stick the tag of underdogs on the Iranians, but I can assure you we certainly won't be underestimating them."

The Iranians, meanwhile, trained last night at Dalymount Park where leading scorer Ali Daei again looked to be carrying a slight injury to his left leg. Afterwards, though, it was said that all of Miroslav Blazevic's men will be fit and available for selection.

And two others, Alireza Vahedinikbakht and Sirous Dinmohammadi, will also be available after FIFA decided not to increase their suspensions.

Dinmohammadi and Vahedinikbakht were sent off in Bahrain and banned for the games versus UAE.

Dinmohammadi was shown the red card for punching an opponent, while Vahedinikbakht was dismissed for kicking the Bahrain goalkeeper.