Understandably, Republic supporters will recall the two 4-0 victories over Cyprus they enjoyed three years ago en route to the finals in Japan and South Korea, and believe such an accomplishment is again on the cards.

But Kerr is wary as he said: “I’ve reminded the players Cyprus have good players and their front two, Michael Konstantinou and Ioannis Okkas, have good goalscoring records at international level.

“They’ve also a number of players playing in Greece who are getting the experience of Champions League football.

“In their last qualifying campaign their results were very good, apart from one bad one against France.

“But I know they’ve invested heavily in their youth structure, they’ve done a great job with the stadiums in their own league and they’ve fantastic training pitches, so I expect it to be difficult.

“I’m used to that, and you know when you play a team in international football they want to take the scalp of a team higher than them [in the world rankings]. I know we do when we play teams higher than ourselves.

“So I’m not expecting them to be heavily defensive – although I expect them to be forced into being defensive at times – because from what I’ve seen up until now, they’ve been adventurous in getting players forward.

“But there will be stages in the game where they will have lots of people behind the ball so it will be difficult and we will need the crowd to be patient.”

Kerr, though, is intent on putting behind him the disappointment of the Republic not being present in Portugal for Euro 2004.

One of the few positives to emerge from such a failure is a number of up-and-coming players have been used during a series of friendlies over the last year, and those players are now coming good.

“Had we qualified for the finals, the approach would have been to have picked the best team to win those finals,” reflected Kerr.

“I said after the defeat to Switzerland [2-0 in Basle in October] it would be time to prepare for this tournament, and that is what we have been doing by bringing in the likes of Andy Reid and several other players.

“They have had an opportunity, whereas if we had reached the finals then we may have gone with the tried-and-trusted players, and those who have done so well.

“So for those who have come in, it’s allowed them to get matches under their belt. It’s been one of the good points.

“But it’s the first time I’ve not had a team at the finals at any level since I started working for the FAI many years ago. There was no great joy in that and I don’t want to experience it again.”