LockerRoom: Isn't it strange but the further away in time we get from those crazy couple of weeks in Saipan the more of a watershed it all seems in terms of our relationship with the national soccer team.

I can remember being in the Beefeater Bar as the sun came up one morning and there being a lot of journalists in there and a lot of Irish players and everyone had been there all night. At dawn there was just the first tremors of a row detectable as Richard Dunne took one of our number to task over what he considered to be the media's improper interest in his lifestyle choices.

Now then, it was daybreak in a bar on the other side of the planet and the drinking had been epic, the World Cup was countable days and hours away and as such Richard wasn't playing with the strongest hand. It blew over and together we all tumbled out on to the sandy street.

The other memorable thing about that strange night was that the drinking was haunted by he who wasn't there. Roy Keane lay sleeping across the street in the team hotel. He has always said that of all the issues he had with the way in which that mad week unfolded he didn't care too much whether the team went drinking or not.

I don't believe him. Roy was at a stage in his career where every second had to matter and everything had to be perfect. His first public eruption in Saipan was over something as small as the format of a seven-a-side game at the end of training. Roy would be the first to admit he has spent many, many nights of his career out on the town in places like the Beefeater Bar but he'd gotten to an age where he had only so much career left and didn't want to flitter it away.

I believe that in his heart he couldn't quite see the point of travelling 23 hours on a plane in order to spend a week or so acclimatising on a Pacific Island and then spending the guts of a valuable day hung-over and dehydrated. And I believe the players who were in the Beefeater Bar that night sensed that too. We all did. Keane was like Banquo's ghost haunting our banquet at Forres Castle, sowing guilt into our hearts.

And that night was as much a goodbye to the old days as anything which followed it. Myself and Paul Kimmage, who was working for the Sunday Independent back then, arrived into the Beefeater Bar later than everybody else and missed the historic pact which was made between players and journalists that nothing would be said or written about the evening. No snaps were taken. No lines were written. Everyone was onside. Just like the old days.

But there was a sense that it was different. In the old days as a nation we'd have rejoiced in the notion of our boys going out and taking on the world while suffering with hangovers and headaches. In The Beefeater everyone knew enough to collude in keeping it all secret.

Keane, though, hated the old days and I think subliminally and instinctively he shared that hatred with Brian Kerr and, oddly enough, with Eamon Dunphy. For true Irish football men who believe that somewhere within us there is native genius which will one day allow us to express ourselves beautifully on the soccer pitch it was a cruel and unusual punishment to see us reach the promised land under the guidance of a big bluff Geordie who found us confounding and amusing but who felt that our best chance was to lump it and run after it.

The team that got us to the big time were remarkable men, great expansive characters and they formed a sodden bond with the people who followed them. It was a harmless, innocent madness which took us all over. Sing-songs between the team and fans in hotels all over the world, the sense of a whole country being on the razz, gate-crashing the best parties.

The Beefeater Bar was the end of that. Last orders. By the end of the week we were all at war. You wanted your Old Segocias back or you wanted the New Spartans. I wanted the New Spartans. I wanted to see how far we could go if we tried to play the best football. I didn't think we could play our best football without our best player.

This week in a quieter way we come to the same juncture. We look at the file of people who might realistically replace Kerr as Irish manager. We can go backward or we can go forward. We can have more Beefeater nights and we can all have the mobile phone number of a garrulous media-friendly new manager whose foibles we will forgive out of, well, decentskinmanship or we can take stock.

What are people saying when in polls anything from 70 per cent (Sunday Independent) to 73 per cent (Today FM) of them want Kerr to keep his job?

I think they are saying that they want the feeling of connectedness which Kerr's character and passion gives them.

They are saying that they can look at the group table and look at the media wars and understand that Kerr has made mistakes but that he's a decent man and a bright man and that what he has learned in three years and what he has in his heart has a whole lot more to offer Irish soccer than some fly-by-night mercenary who might briefly beguile the hacks and charm the blazers.

People understand more than the FAI will give them credit for. They understand simple maths. Subtract Keano and Duffer and you are left with virtually nothing. They understand when they look at the Sunday papers and see the sort of teams for whom our players are (in most cases not) playing for that we have reached hard times. They understand that the world has changed. It's harder to qualify. It's harder for young Irish players to come through in Britain.

Kerr's team underachieved in the last year but there is that context. In the last agonies of Mick McCarthy's reign, those woeful performances against Russia and Switzerland there was that ghost hanging over proceedings. "Keano, Keano" chanted the Lansdowne Road crowd. Without our driving force and our world-class player we were in trouble. So it was last week. Keane and Duff subtracted. At least half of what remains are in sharp decline.

With some arrogance we described the Swiss as ordinary but they play for sides like Borussia Dortmund and Bayer Leverkusen and Arsenal and AC Milan. They are a hardened lot. They came and got the draw.

I think that people are saying they want to retain the sense of difference. A relaxed, open, confident Brian Kerr has the ability to place a foot in both worlds, that of the cold but pampered professional and that of the ordinary sham.

What are the charges against Kerr? We thought he'd be Mr Bojangles at press conferences and he has let us down. He took an ordinary team into an ordinary group and couldn't escape. He let Thierry Henry score? He allowed John O'Shea to give Israel a penalty? Some of our performances were muted and blunt? Post Genesis there has been no criticism of what the players have been provided in terms of back-up and planning and preparation. There have been quibbles over line-ups but they have been post hoc. There have been flat performances but McCarthy got to the end of his first campaign as Irish manager in much the same shape. People hollered and howled after the scoreless draw with Iceland and wept in Skopje but McCarthy was a much better manager at the end of it all.

This week the FAI face into a watershed. Realistically, if they place an ad in the shop window they will get a postbag full of beaten dockets like Aldo and Ronnie Whelan and Joe Kinnear and Billy McNeill.

What the FAI need is somebody with a little international experience, a guy with a vision and with a passion for the game in this country. We need somebody willing to work with the FAI, a man with an interest in the overall structure of football in this country. A big picture, long haul sort of fella, a decent man available for a relatively small amount of money, somebody who can accept the fact that the current bunch of players (ah, bless the mark) are going to remain, alas, the current bunch of players. Somebody who can be great.

They have his phone number.