IT WAS COMING towards the end of Stephen Kenny’s pre-match briefing ahead of tomorrow’s FAI Cup clash with Derry City that the St Patrick’s Athletic boss was asked about Republic of Ireland successor Heimir Hallgrímsson.

Football being football, it’s a very typical twist of fate that Kenny’s new training base with the League of Ireland club is on the same Abbotstown campus as the FAI’s headquarters.

Hallgrímsson and his wife, Iris, have been touring the country since being confirmed last week.

Some of it has been business – like meeting John O’Shea in Waterford on Monday to convince him to become his No.2 – while there was also a catch up with another Icelandic couple who have been living in a Dublin suburb for the past 10 years and were offering advice on where to base themselves.

Hallgrímsson will become a regular feature around Abbotstown over the next couple of months, especially as he plans on immersing himself in the relevant video analysis of his new squad as well as arranging Zoom calls with players before the start of the Nations League in September.

“I have never met him but I want to wish him good luck in his role. I want to wish him well. I genuinely mean that and hope he gets every success,” Kenny said.

Chances are their paths will likely cross at some point. Not in the corridors of FAI HQ, as Pat’s operate out of the adjacent building belonging to Sport Ireland, but in the shared car park, the private gym or en route to a training pitch.

“There is a really talented group of players there who are playing at a very high level and who have got an accumulation of caps under their belt,” Kenny said.

“I think it is quite a strong squad now. It is a different picture and a good opportunity, a very good opportunity, for a manager to come in now.”

How the crop that Kenny blooded over the last four years goes on to mature will go a long way to bolstering a legacy that sadly could not deliver the kind of visible progress – and success – that people wanted straight away from the methods being used.

Among them, Seamus Coleman.

The Ireland captain provided a candid interview while on pre-season duty with Everton on Wednesday and among numerous standout lines, this stood out when discussing the development of those young players introduced by Kenny.

“Maybe they have started to realise that it’s not just coming in to get a cap and play well [for] one in every three games. Hopefully some of the senior lads are letting them know that there is a bigger picture to it. It’s about qualifying,” Coleman said.

“There have been too many tournaments that have passed us by now.”

Coleman went on to offer up the names of Gavin Bazunu, Dara O’Shea and Nathan Collins as three who have come to the fore with the right kind of character he believes is necessary to drive the standards required to qualify and compete.

“They have more of an understanding about wanting to get to tournaments… I’ll do what I can in terms of on the pitch and around [the squad] to make sure that we have lads who really want to get there,” Coleman said.

Sometimes you may feel the need to read between the lines but Coleman appeared to lay it out pretty clearly: that it was a period in which there were players in the squad who were learning on the job and trying to get to grips with the demands they were facing.

That’s understandable and Kenny, ultimately, paid the price for their and his shortcomings when it mattered.

But it was also necessary.

Ireland needed a drastic overhaul and injection of youth to strengthen the squad for the long term.

Coleman, of course, was right to acknowledge that he was viewing all of this through the prism of a stalwart approaching the end of their career, and it would be foolish to ignore the assessment of someone of his calibre.

“I know that, ultimately, to progress long-term, you want a style of play, you want a way of playing football. But selfishly, as a player, you want to get to tournaments, so the best way possible is to get to those tournaments without maybe turning your back on trying to play attractive football,” Coleman said.

“Of course that’s what we all want and that’s how you develop, but you have got to weigh it up.

“We have to get the balance right between playing attractive football, but also playing to win games. For me, that’s where we need to get to.”

Balance is the key word here.

And it will be worth remembering that even after England come to Dublin for the start of the Nations League on 7 September.

Otherwise the past, present and future of Irish football will look very similar.