Dick Advocaat has always been a funny one. A small, round man with the bearing of a brass band leader who keeps checking his watch because his bass trombonist hasn't got out of bed yet. It's a decent bet that somewhere in his worldly possessions is one of those little signs that reads, 'Rule Number One: The Boss Is Always Right. Rule Number Two: See Rule Number One.' Back in the late '90s, he was managing Rangers for a full six months before he dared tell his mother than he had moved abroad. "Well Dick," she said, "I thought you couldn't be at PSV Eindhoven anymore."

I remember sitting on the stage in a steaming little press conference room in Aviero six summers ago after his Dutch team had thrown away a 2-0 lead against a glorious Czech side in the best game of Euro 2004. The Dutch press were giving him hell over it – stand-up, finger-jabbing, look-what-you've-done-you-fool hell. With the Netherlands 2-1 up around the hour mark, he'd taken off the raw but thrilling 20-year-old Arjen Robben and replaced him with workaday kicker Paul Bosveld to an avalanche of boos from the stands. The eventual 3-2 defeat was universally held as his comeuppance. Even his players shrugged and said as much in the mixed zone.

Advocaat wouldn't be told, however. Though he shifted a little uneasily in his seat afterwards and adjusted his smart KNVB blazer and tie as the media piled it on, he dug in and wouldn't budge. "Everyone is talking about my substitution that didn't work out," he declared, his eyes narrowing, his dudgeon rising. "But no one is talking about all the chances that we missed." Hadn't these people heard of Rule Number One? Dick's a different dude these days, though. Since that Saturday night six years ago, he's trousered a wage at seven different coaching jobs. He's developed the happy knack of failing upwards and doing so in short, sharp bursts. His contract with Russia is supposed to last for the next four years but before Friday night nobody was betting it would. They're not especially inclined to now either, even after the 3-2 win. Like The Littlest Hobo, there always seems to be a voice calling Dick down the road. Every stop he makes, he makes a new friend. Can't stay for long, just turn around and he's gone again.

Maybe it'll all work out for Dick and the Russians and maybe it won't. Advocaat doesn't seem overly worried either way. When he came in to talk to the media afterwards on Friday night, there was no tie to discomfit him and his natty sports jacket stayed casually open throughout. He didn't look like a man who'd just had the fright of his life in the final 20 minutes against Ireland, or even like a man who'd had a fright of any sort in quite some time.

"We wanted to keep Ireland away from our own box," he said, as if winning at soccer was the most simple task imaginable. "We wanted to force them to play the long ball. We made them play a way they don't want to play." Quite how Advocaat knows what way Ireland don't want to play when they didn't look altogether sure themselves on that score wasn't made clear. What is certain though is that Russia's hired gun comfortably outdrew Ireland's on Friday night. Giovanni Trapattoni can't have stood on many sidelines over the years knowing that he was being outcoached but this was one of them. Just how the fact that Paul Green and Glenn Whelan were dealing with far more water than they had buckets for could be clear to everybody in the stadium except the one man being paid to do something about it is tough to work out. Like Robert De Niro's character Ace Rothstein says in Casino, "Either he was in on it, or forgive me for saying, but he was too dumb to see what was going on."

The latter can't be a possibility, can it? He's Trap after all, our straight-backed saviour. The man who took us to the Stade de France and left us all dreaming of a better world. The organiser, the uber-coach who gathered up all the scrap metal from the end of the Staunton era and recycled it into something passable and useable again. He's SuperTrapifragilisticexpiTrapidocious. Isn't he?

Afterwards, he sounded almost as unmoved as Advocaat about the result. "The qualification starts again on Tuesday," he said. "I am a little – but not too much – disappointed. There are many games left." He's not wrong, of course. But let's just say it's not a sentiment Staunton would have got a pass on had he just presided over a qualifier where his side was so thoroughly outplayed and he himself so comprehensively outfoxed. It will be next September before he and Advocaat face each other again, assuming they're both still in situ. Eleven months for Trap to redeem himself. You have to hope he's open to a little wiggle room on Rule Number One.

Whatchamacallit - A stadium by any other name

The Aviva was pretty rocking for the last 20 minutes on Friday night. Or should that be, 'Lansdowne Road was pretty rocking for the last 20 minutes on Friday night'? Tough one, this. Where do you stand?

Manning the barricades to preserve the Lansdowne name feels like an odd choice. Fair enough if you don't like the oily hand of the sponsor slithering its way into your sporting night out but the third Marquess of Lansdowne was a Westminster politician back in the day. Why go back that far and no further? The street itself was originally called Haig's Avenue after a descendant of the Scotch Whisky family. All in all, it seems a more appropriate choice.

There has to be a better way and we at the Tribune think we might have it. We're piggybacking on Mr G Thornley of The Irish Times who referred to the stadium as "the palindrome" a couple of weeks back, which we had to admit is very clever.

But then we thought, if you drop just one letter, it's perfect. And so, friends and fans across the nation, we give you... The Palindome.

Try it out. Your friends will think you're awfully sharp. And if they don't, you read it in The Irish Times, right?

mclerkin@tribune.ie