The past week has meant nothing, of course. The media have been met, mollied and coddled but nobody ever won or lost anything at a press conference. Staunton's job has gotten off to a start, to be sure, but that's it. Bad or good aren't the relevant judgements here.

It's only just begun.

What can be said is that they make an engaging duo, even at this early stage. Little by little, light will be shed on how it's all going to work between them. They wouldn't go too far into it when they sat down during the week but that wasn't because they were being evasive. It was, simply, because they didn't really know themselves.

The best anyone can guess at, it'll be a work in progress.

The situations aren't really comparable but Staunton has seen before at first hand how these things can go belly-up if handled the wrong way. He put in his second spell at Liverpool just at the time when the ill-fated double act of Roy Evans and Gerard Houllier were bungling their way through life. Had he taken any worthwhile notes?

"Two men wanted that job.

That was the big difference.

Hang on, you've got a problem if two men want the same job and one's got it, you've got a major problem. I've seen the back-stabbing. That man doesn't want my job. He's here for me."

Staunton reckons Robson will be a help, for instance, when it comes to dealing with Premiership managers. "He's dealt with them, I'll be able to go in there as a third party if needs be, " he says. "He will make my introduction into that side of it very easy. He'll get me into contact with people who I think, 'Oh my God' but at the end of the day most of these people were footballers so they know the score. I don't see a problem.

Within football, unless you've done something really wrong people will speak to you."

Robson, for his part (and in his endearingly malaproprian way) says he won't be offended in the least if his advice isn't acted upon. "Not at all, I'm here to support Stan in any way, through thick and thin. If I make a suggestion and he says 'No, I quite like your suggestion but I'm not taking it, ' I'll support that no suggestion. We know these players' qualities, we've got to get their biggest ambition, their biggest motivation, their big work ethic, the fact that they want to play for Ireland and wear the green shirt with pride. And play until the last minute and drop until they're dead."

If nothing else, Staunton seems set on bringing a complete no-nonsense attitude and open mind to his task. He says, for instance, that it's no skin off his nose if players are attracted into his squad by people other than him. "If a boy wants to play and it means Bobby getting him for us, or Alan [Kelly] getting him, or Kevin [MacDonald] or Sean McCaffrey or Don Givens I don't care. I don't care if it's any of you lads [the press]. If we get players who are better than what we've got, that enhances our chances."

It's at this stage that he begins to get further into the issue of the granny rule. From his obvious enthusiasm for it, it's not hard to picture him over these past few years sitting at home watching Ireland matches, shaking his head sadly at the television over the lack of options on the bench. Clearly unhappy with the tools he's got, he's in the market for further ones, for better ones.

"That has to be done, it's essential. We might find a few, we might find no one but if we don't try we won't find out. If we improve the squad it's better for us. There are plenty of lads who are out there, anyone who's Irish or can be declared Irish is on board and it's up to us . . . it's up to me to decide in the end which panel we pick from.

We'll go down every avenue."

What if it's a case where a player wants to only commit to playing a friendly so as not to ruin his chances of playing for another country? Would Staunton allow him the latitude?

"Of course I will. He'll see what we're about. If he doesn't want to play so what? We've gained nothing, lost nothing.

But believe me, anybody who comes over here, they'll only have to be here the once. Over the years, the Irish people have taken to the non-Irish lads sometimes even better because they've come from England and they've gone, 'Wow, fantastic'. They've given even more. If that happens again it's great news for me."

And for a man who'll accept nothing less than the spilling of every last ounce of sweat from his squads, he's even adopting a remarkably candid and open mind on the issue of playing in friendlies.

"To be honest, I wouldn't be too bothered if one or two of our better players turned around and said they're not really bothered. I don't need to see them play in a green shirt. They're playing big games every week and I'll be seeing them play. I want to get back [the idea] that it's too good to miss out on. 'Will you get us in for 20 minutes even?'

is the attitude I'll be looking for from them. I'm going to be wanting to blood young fellas and the friendlies are there for that reason."

So maybe that will be one departure from the Brian Kerr years, the practice of padding out the win-loss record by going all out to win friendlies cast aside in favour of giving younger player minutes on the pitch. Another is almost certain to be a completely hands-off approach from Staunton when it comes to the nooks and crannies of the running of the game in Ireland.

"The technical plan and all that seems to have worked well so far, I've no problem with the men in charge. I think this job is big enough without handling other people's work. At the end of the day, Don Givens is a wellrecognised figure in football, very good coach, developed at Arsenal as you know. Why should I interfere?"

In the end, Staunton is nothing less than a realist.

His tactical acumen, his ability to make the right move at the right time, his man-management . . . they're all issues for another time. On this, only his second weekend in the job, heart can be taken from his pragmatism, laced as it is with the pride of a man who's worn his country's jersey more times than any other.

"Listen, deep down this has been an ambition of mine but it's come a bit earlier than even I thought. I mean let's be realistic, I was looking at management, lower leagues and working my way up and maybe get a job. But I've also seen ex-players who've been offered jobs fairly early, stayed at a club and all of a sudden it's never come back.

So I thought to myself, I'm still in touch with the players, I've been away for a few years which has worked out quite well, I've had that break.

Yeah, there's a lot of them my mates. I won't have any hangups about chopping and changing if it's the right thing to do for the country.

"That's what you've got to remember, it's for the country, it's not for me, or for Bobby or Alan or Kevin. It's not for the players, we all want to do this to get the nation bouncing again, to get us on the right road. Let's get positive about things. Too much negativity has gone on around here for too long."

Only one way to change that, Stan.

GENE THERAPY: THE EVER-PRESENT GRANNIES AND THEIR TALENTED GRANDSONS

IT'S all anyone could raise a bee in their bonnets about all week. The granny rule. As if a click of Steve Staunton's "ngers was all it would take for the Houghton/Aldridge/ Townsend scales to fall from the eyes of dozens of topquality strikers, playmakers, holding midfielders, right wingers, centre-halves and left-backs. The Irish are in the market once more, everybody.

Roll up, roll up, roll up . . . it's time for an riail seanmhathair.

A multi-accented nation once again.

Brian Kerr must be seething. The way the debate has been shaped, you'd swear that this was a new departure, that there have been queues of talent knocking on the green door of Merrion Square these past three years only to be shown the 'No English, No Scots, No Brazilians' sign. It has been pointed out that only Aiden McGeady, Paddy Kenny and Jon Macken were recruited during Kerr's time in charge, as if the likes of Darren Fletcher and Anton Ferdinand somehow slipped through his fingers because of either incompetence or indifference.

Clearly keen not to appear bitter and twisted in the week of his successor's anointment, Kerr has mostly kept his counsel all week. He did, however, stand up for himself briey at the Sport Against Racism in Ireland launch on Wednesday when he declared that he'd left no stone unturned in his search for players to improve the Ireland squad he had at his disposal. It was a quiet declaration and a point worth making.

Just because the prevailing attitude towards Kerr these days is mostly negative, it doesn't follow that everything he did as Irish manager was wrong. And on this point in particular, he has a strong case to make. A quick scan through the Irish underage squads shows that far from shunning the children of the Diaspora, Kerr and the underage set-up he oversaw for so long actively searched for talent abroad and continues to do so.

Patrick Kohlmann is a sturdy left-sided full-back cum midfielder who's been on the books of Borussia Dortmund since the age of 12.

He was born in Germany and has lived there all his life but his mother is from Trim and he spent all his summers as a kid in Meath. He's 22 now and is a fixture in the Dortmund reserve side. Kerr found out about him in 1999 and capped him at under-16 level in a tournament in Denmark. Since then, he's played at every level all the way up to under-21.

He's just one of many. Billy Mehmet and Jay Tabb are both strikers that Don Givens has played in his under-21 squads over the past two years. Both are London-born, Tabb to an Irish mother, Mehmet descended from an Irish grandmother. Mehmet, indeed, chose Ireland over both England and Turkey.

David Bell, who moved from Rushden and Diamonds to Luton during the current transfer window for £100,000, similarly turned down both England and Scotland to play for the country his younger cousin . . . also David Bell . . . turns out for.

And it goes all the way down.

Mike Keohane is an American goalkeeper for the under-18s with an Irish father. Sean Cooney was born in Australia, Kieron Thorp and Adrian Moyles in Sussex. The point is, there's no point bleating about bringing back the granny rule.

It's already here.