Jack Charlton last night bestowed his blessing on the man many said could never fill the ten-league boots of Ireland's Jolly Green Giant.

Long before Mick McCarthy became his successor, Charlton had been canonised as the manager who gave the country footballing credibility and his status as a sporting saint remains undiminished.

Charlton's charismatic success was the hardest of acts to follow. But more than three years since he quit after reaching the final stages of two World Cups and the European Championship finals, McCarthy is on the bring of taking the Republic into a new era.

No matter the outcome of the stressful sequence which begins with tonight's Dublin encounter with Yugoslavia, then Saturday's meeting with Croatia and next week's game in Malta, Charlton believes McCarthy has gained the momentum to rival even his achievements. Charlton was once told by McCarthy that he wanted to adopt a whole new tactical format from the one which turned Ireland from serial under-achievers to international heavyweights.

But he bears no malice and only admiration for McCarthy who, these days, is so comfortable with him that yesterday the 'new' man was even offering his predecessor the loan of his golf clubs.

Charlton admires McCarthy for doing the job his way and insisted his former employers should stick with the hard-edged, blunt-speaking Yorkshireman who may not possess the same gift of the blarney that made the 1966 English World Cupwinner a born-again Irishman but makes up for it in Barnsley grit.

Charlton said: 'Whatever happens, Mick should be allowed to continue whether they make it to Euro 2000 or not. They have at least come near and progress will come. Mick has used a lot of games just to blood young players. That takes time. He has also got the most he could out of the older players.

'So now he has a team who are quite experienced and who will get better. You can criticise that he might be a little heavy-handed with the players at times but you have to maintain discipline.

'You can see a shape to the team - just as you could with my teams - and it is good to see. I think he has done well.'

Such a tribute on the eve of such a crucial match will give McCarthy's credibility extra value which he may need for he admits that, if the next games result in failure and not his emergence from Charlton's shadow, he may pay with his job.

McCarthy, who has worked hard on his communication skills after starting in the job with a stiff upper lip and an even stiffer public profile, has had to endure unfair comparison with largerthan-life Charlton.

McCarthy said: 'Following Big Jack was always going to be difficult because of his success and because in many ways he has a different style. I am hands-on like he was but he was a good bit older than me when I got the job. I was 37, he was 55.

'Had I taken this job when I was 29 I would probably have taken a hacksaw to somebody because I am so fiercely competitive. But, as you get older, you become better able to switch off, as Jack proved.'

Charlton, indeed, would more often be spotted standing in a river waiting for a salmon than taking in game after game during international fallow periods, as McCarthy does, almost obsessively.

While Charlton could take any cockney-accented player with an Irish stew stain on his birth certificate, McCarthy has built from the ground up with very few of his squad now anything other than 'real' Irishmen.

After forgivable failure to reach last year's World Cup Finals while McCarthy continued his regeneration, the moment of truth may be upon him. He knows that, even in the current optimistic climate, there are still those - perhaps within the FAI itself - waiting for him to stumble.

Yet he is Charltonesque in his acceptance of the possible consequences of failure, saying: 'If certain decisions were made about me I would still be proud of what I have done in this job.

'Certainly I would now be better able to handle anything in the future - whether it is Euro 2000, the World Cup Finals in 2002, managing a Premiership club, a First Division club or going abroad.'

Tonight, McCarthy recalls Steve Staunton for his 79th cap at left back so Denis Irwin switches to the right to displace Steve Carr.

Republic of Ireland (4-4-2): A Kelly (Blackburn); Irwin (Man Utd), Cunningham (Wimbledon), Breen (Coventry), Staunton (Liverpool); Kennedy (Man City), Roy Keane (Man Utd), Kinsella (Charlton), Kilbane (West Brom); Robbie Keane (Coventry), Quinn (Sunderland).
On TV: Channel 5, 7.15.