That figure was actually wrong. Following an unbeaten qualifying campaign on the way to that tournament, Bruckner had received a pay rise. By then, he was drawing down a salary of nearly 80,000. These days, he's on an estimated 100,000. That would be approximately a quarter of the annual sum reportedly being paid to Steve Staunton to manage Ireland.

Between the August friendly against the Netherlands and next month's clash with San Marino then, Staunton will have pocketed roughly the same amount that his Czech counterpart takes home in a year. The disparity is all the more glaring when one considers the difference in experience between the pair.

Before making his international name with his country's under-21s in the late '90s, Bruckner had been managing Czech, Slovakian and Slovenian clubs for more than a quarter of a century.

Staunton's coaching CV extends no further than a brief stint working with one of the worst defences in League One at Walsall.

That FAI chief executive John Delaney saw fit to give a novice such a lucrative fouryear contract is surprising given what that kind of money can get a more daring association on the open market.

How about Leo Beenhakker for starters? Fresh from his impressive World Cup sojourn with Trinidad and Tobago, the Dutch veteran took the Polish job for a mere 250,000 a year. If the Poles thought that kind of money might get them somebody with a knack for helping teams of limited ability get results against betterequipped opponents (an excerpt from the job ad for the next Irish manager), they have already been proved right.

Notwithstanding an opening game defeat to Finland, and some expected offthe-field clashes between Beenhakker and the Polish version of Merrion Square, the team has seven points from their past three games. The same week Ireland suffered the most embarrassing result in its recent history, Beenhakker's Poland became the first side in 10 years to beat Portugal in a qualifying match.

Twice manager of the Netherlands, he won three Spanish titles at Real Madrid, spent years immersed in the Ajax system, and has sampled football in cultures as diverse as Mexico, Switzerland, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Yet, he costs nearly half as much as the FAI chose to pay somebody who'd never managed a team in his life.

In a world where the English FA gave Sven Goran Eriksson an annual stipend of £4 million, and the cash-rich Russians fork out 2 million for Guus Hiddink, the salaries of most international managers are much less than people imagine. It's not that long ago since Mark Hughes got the Wales job by default after Terry Venables and Roy Hodgson both refused to work for £100,000 a year. Lawrie Sanchez was until very recently on a similar figure with Northern Ireland and further afield, Sweden's Lars Lagerback signed a new contract after the World Cup for just under 200,000.

Having managed or co-managed his country to four successive major finals, Lagerback is now earning about half as much as the neophyte Irish boss. Is Staunton twice as good as his Swedish counterpart? Would it be cheeky to ask if Lagerback earns more or less than the FAI are paying Bobby Robson, Kevin MacDonald and Pat Devlin for their various ancillary roles around Staunton?

By any measure, the Dundalk native certainly can't compete with the managerial experience or qualifications of the likes of Serbia's Javier Clemente, Denmark's Morten Olsen, France's Raymond Domenech and Switzerland's Kobi Kuhn. If press reports are to believed, he is, remarkably enough, paid more than all of them. John Delaney aside, what football man in Europe would pick Staunton ahead of any of that quartet?

Given that Olsen, Domenech and Kuhn are managing their native countries, Clemente is perhaps a better example of the value available on the open market. Despite an immense football pedigree of its own, Serbia . . . newly weakened by the impending loss of Montenegrin players . . . recently employed the Spanish veteran on a two-year deal.

Mastermind of Spain's memorable 31 defeat of Ireland at Lansdowne Road in October, 1993, Clemente won La Liga twice with Athletic Bilbao, and has also managed Marseilles, Athletico Madrid, Real Sociedad and Real Betis. For the services of somebody who led Spain on a 31-game unbeaten run back in the '90s, the Serbs are gladly paying 360,000.

Four matches into the campaign, they are perched on top of Group A via three victories and a draw. Proving yet again that this is a game where you can get what you pay for.

A few months before John Delaney famously announced his quest to find a world-class individual to replace Brian Kerr, the League Managers' Association in England conducted a survey of its members to find out what they were being paid. The average salary of a manager in League One at the time was put at £80,000. Assuming Paul Merson was even getting that much at a seriously cash-strapped Walsall, Staunton had to be earning significantly less as his assistant. Still, last January the FAI thought it necessary to quadruple his wages to get him to take over his own country and to try his hand at management for the very first time.

Generous. To a fault, some would say.