A little over 40 years, he recalls, after he tried but failed to sign a young John Toshack from Cardiff City for Fulham, Bobby Robson took time out yesterday to talk to the media about the current state of the Republic of Ireland's preparations to face the Welshman's side on Saturday.

It was a quiet news day in the camp with only the minor ankle injury sustained by Anthony Stokes in Tuesday's training to report but the former England manager is optimistic that he, Paul McShane and Stephen Ireland will be fit by Saturday just as he was upbeat generally regarding the team's prospects in the games against Wales and Slovakia.

Before he got to talk about the Welsh, however, he first found himself obliged to do something nobody else in the Irish camp had been able to so far: provide a coherent explanation of just how it was that the Republic could scrape only the most narrow of wins in San Marino last month.

Surrounded by journalists at a table only partially cleared after it had been used by a group of players for lunch, Robson at one stage started moving tape recorders about the place so as to demonstrate how the two teams lined out at the Serravalle Stadium. But, with movement in his left arm still very restricted and a couple of journalists looking concerned about where their particular machines might end up, he quickly abandoned the approach.

He settled instead for an assessment that both credited the Sammarinese with having made a timely decision to abandon playing to win against the likes of Germany and Ireland and conceded there had been very little the Irish did well on the night.

Along the way, the 74-year-old brought four full decades of top-level management experience to bear on the task of making what happened in last month's outing seem reasonable and, to be fair, he very nearly succeeded.

"If you were there you will know as well as I do that there's their group of players," he said gently, pointing to one half of the recorders before turning his attention to the other half and observing, "and we have a group of players. They attack, lose the ball and we attack 'cos we've got the ball. That didn't happen in San Marino. They all sat in position. Nobody broke. Their full- backs never broke, the midfield players never broke. They put up one striker and another to break in support of him, after that eight people, always eight people behind the ball.

"Now, you might say they were ordinary players," he continued, "and to some extent you'd be right, they were. But to dislodge them, to take them out, to get in behind, to cross the ball in to the box where they have three centre halves, all big lads, and a 'keeper who is playing much better than he had before, is still difficult.

"They played with one striker and one player breaking. And do you know why? Because they're sick of losing 7-0, 5-0, 9-0, 13-0. What they're saying is 'we can't play an attacking game against Germany or Ireland, we've got to play to concede not too many goals'. So it's not easy. We did get crosses in but our free-kicks were poor, our movement in the box was poor and so we have to improve on that without," he concludes with a slight grin, "telling John Toshack what we're going to do."

Ultimately, he insists, like Steve Staunton before him, that the determination of the Irish players to rescue the win in injury-time, and the fact that they succeeded is doing so, goes a good way to making up for what had gone before.

And a month on it is the positives that he and the Ireland manager have sought to build on as they prepare now for games crucial, if not to Ireland's chances of qualification for next summer's European Championships then certainly to the team's ranking when the draw for the next World Cup is made.

Robson accepts, and says that the players do too, the criticism that came in the wake of the San Marino game. However, when it is put to him that Roy Keane has suggested the team's senior players have thus far failed to perform for Staunton he opts to diplomatically deflect the matter.

"I don't want to take away anything from Roy Keane," he says. "Roy's the Sunderland manager and he gets on with his job while Stan gets on with his job. If he's saying that then he's probably criticising some of the players, well we don't want to do that, we want to get on with encouraging the players.

"We want Robbie Keane and Damien Duff and John O'Shea and (Aiden) McGeady, if he plays, and (Stephen) Ireland and Lee Carsley to be at their best because the potential of your team is in your best players and we want our best players to play very well. If they do that then Ireland will win."

The other factor, he acknowledges, is preventing the best of the Welsh from performing. "You've got to deal with good players like (Craig) Bellamy and (Ryan) Giggs. Like Paul McShane dealt with Jan Koller in the Czech Republic game. Whoever Steve picks at centre half has got to be aware of that because I think Giggsy might play there with Bellamy.

"They (the Welsh) will come thinking a point here is a good result but knowing John, they'll try to win and they'll always have a chance with Giggs and Bellamy on the break. You've got to make sure we don't give them that opportunity. We've got to deal with their big players, their match winners."

Do that, he suggests, and the Irish "match winners" will have the chance to do their job a little more convincingly than in San Marino last month. Fail, he knows, and it will be harder than ever to make the next round of post-match explanations for Ireland's shortcoming sound convincing.