Mick McCarthy was battered and bruised when he left the Republic of Ireland managerial position back in 2002.
A 4-2 loss in Russia followed by a 2-1 Lansdowne Road defeat to Switzerland ended his time in charge of the Boys in Green after highs, lows and - dare we mention it - Saipan.
He may have been damaged by the hysterical drama of it all but his reputation was not. Offers were hardly in short supply, and McCarthy was soon back in the saddle.
Over a period of 16 years McCarthy managed three clubs: Sunderland, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Ipswich Town. Two of those jobs lasted the guts of six years. He won the Championship twice - with Sunderland and Wolves - and had to box clever on a tight budget with all three outfits.
For the most part, he did that very well, though there were bumps along the way.
Here, RTÉ Sport reflects on his managerial journey from Ireland to Ireland.
Sunderland - 'Excellent in the Championship, terrible in Premier League'
His first Ireland stint ended in November 2002, but by the following April a relatively fresh-faced 43-year-old McCarthy was heading for the Stadium of Light.
The Black Cats were already doomed to relegation from the top flight at that stage after an awful winless run under Howard Wilkinson so no blame was apportioned to McCarthy when they inevitably did go down.
They'd lose a penalty shootout in the play-offs against Crystal Palace in his first full campaign but stormed to the title in 2005 to go back up. Life with the big boys was extremely tough however. Marooned at the bottom of the league, McCarthy was sacked with ten games to go. His replacement? Roy Keane.
"He's a manger who will serve a purpose, a good manager for teams with limited resources, with players who are willing to work hard to do a certain job and maybe get you promoted," Stephen Goldsmith, co-founder of the Wise Men Say Sunderland fan podcast, tells RTÉ Sport.
"Where he falls short in my opinion is when he gets to the elite level. I don't think he's got the tactical knowledge unfortunately,
"When Mick was here we finished third in his first season in the Championship, we won the league the season after and yet the attendances... we probably get more now. When Roy Keane came, and when Peter Reid was here before Mick, the attendances were up probably by ten thousand.
"I think that's a reflection of Mick's style of football. Sunderland fans want their teams to work hard first and foremost but there is only so far that will take you.
"I know when he got us promoted to the Premier League in 2005 attendances weren't great from the start. Some of that was down to a lack of funds, he wasn't give the money. He did amazing on a budget.
"His Championship record with Sunderland was excellent. His Premier League record was terrible. To me that sums him up. With teams that have limited ability that are willing to work hard, in general he'll get them to punch above their weight.
"To be fair, Martin O'Neill [who managed Sunderland from 2011 to 2013], his football was worse than Mick McCarthy's. O'Neill would let the other team have the ball and try to hit them on the counter. That was it. Mick was happy for his team to have the ball. He wasn't a long-ball merchant, it was just a bit raggy. I never felt there was a massive tactical plan.
"Sunderland fans would generally say 'he was alright'. Overall he did a good job for Sunderland. If he came back he'd get a round of applause.
"I'm really interested to see how he does. He did well with Ireland the last time. Will he be better than Martin O'Neill? I don't know. On on hand he's overachieved with limited players, but on the other hand once he got to the Premier League he massively under-performed. There was no middle ground. I just felt that when he was up against those good managers and good players every week he struggled.
"I'd suggest that when Ireland play against teams of similar ability they'll be alright because a lot of the time it's just about getting players to believe in themselves. Let's see how he does."
Wolves - 'His character and passion resonated with the fans'
McCarthy's next port of call was Wolverhampton Wanderers, where he took over from Glenn Hoddle in the summer of 2006.
Then in the Championship, he led a Wolves squad made up of cheap signings and promising youth players to the play-offs, where they lost to midlands rivals West Brom.
They missed out on the play-offs on goal difference the following season but in 2009/09 McCarthy took Wolves back to the big time, securing the title with a point at his hometown club Barnsley.
They stayed in the Premier League for two years but McCarthy moved on towards the end of the 2011/12 campaign. He was gone by February, in the wake of a 5-1 home thumping against the Baggies. Wolves went down that May.
"He's still remembered well," says Joe Edwards, Wolves reporter for English midlands publication The Express and Star.
"The success they've had under Nuno helps fans look back and appreciate the good times they had in Mick's reign as well. It went a bit sour towards the end but in the grand scheme of things he did a lot for the club.
"He doesn't mince his words but he resonated, his character and passion. Fans really took to him. He came in after the Glenn Hoddle era. A lot of Wolves fans switched off during that era. It wasn't the worst football you've ever seen but there were a lot of draws... it didn't catch the imagination. It needed a kick up the backside and when Mick came in he did exactly that.
"Getting them into the Premier League and the first season they had there, those two seasons embodied what Mick was all about. He had players that weren't the most talented in the world but they always wore their hearts on their sleeves and gave their all for the cause.
"The third season was where fans thought Wolves might kick on but they invested the money in the wrong place. They had two major flop signings: defender Roger Johnson [a £7m capture from Birmingham City] and Jamie O'Hara [who arrived from Spurs for £5m with a lofty reputation but admitted years later: "I got the great contract and I took my foot off the gas"].
"That's where the wheels started to fall off. In hindsight to let him go when they did, when Terry Connor took over for the rest of the season, a lot of people look back and think, 'had we given Mick the season to see it out who knows, maybe we could have pulled off the great escape'.
"What's helped Mick's legacy as well is how good Matt Doherty has turned out to be, especially this season. Mick was the man who put in this kid from Bohemians that nobody had heard of. I spoke to Matt last week and he's really excited to be reunited with Mick.
"He had a few finds. Yes he made some poor signings in his last season but by and large he got it right.
"It wasn't tiki-taka but it wasn't bad football either. If you look at the 2008/09 team they were quite direct but they had players who could mix it and pass teams off the park as well. The big onus was on the wide men and the strikers, a classic 4-4-2. It was attack-minded football.
"He had players like Kevin Doyle and Stephen Hunt - Duracell Bunnies who wouldn't stop. I think that's what he'll try and get out of Ireland, total commitment and pride in the shirt.
"We've a lot more fond memories than bad. People look back on it now and realise Mick did a very good job."
Ipswich Town - 'The team's biggest strength became their weakness'
McCarthy was very close to taking the Nottingham Forest job just a few months after parting ways with Wolves.
The move fell through because he wanted to manage in the Premier League but he ultimately ended up at Ipswich in November 2012 after Paul Jewell was dismissed. The Tractor Boys were rock bottom of the Championship when he walked in the door but his arrival instantly galvanised the club and players. They finished 14th, and the following season saw them rise up to ninth.
In 2015/16 a dogged Ipswich made the play-offs where they lost to bitter rivals Norwich City, and they narrowly missed out on the play-off spots in 2017 when the finished seventh.
Things began to dip thereafter, and McCarthy would not see out the 2017/18 campaign.
"The players loved him, absolutely loved him," says Andy Warren who covers Ipswich Town for The East Anglian Daily Times.
"They wanted him to stay. But it was a reign of two halves really. He was a god here in the first half, saved us from relegation in his first season, transformed us in the second and made the play-offs with a squad that shouldn't have in his third season.
"After that, budgets and things began to strain a little bit. The football wasn't great and his final season was dominated by his contract being up at the end of it, and there was no clarity from the club over whether he was going to stay. Mick was very cagey about that. And the relationship with the fans began to deteriorate."
The final straw came when McCarthy gave ex-Limerick man Barry Cotter his debut against Barnsley in April 2018. Cotter was excellent, but when McCarthy took him off the crowd turned on the manager.
Afterwards a furious McCarthy labelled the boos "pathetic", adding: "I've signed him and played him. He's absolutely knackered, he needs to come off. The boy was absolutely brilliant. I'm out of here. Sad, because I've loved my time here. I've left the club in a far better place than I found them."
"Barry Cotter was brilliant, really really good," adds Warren. "He was a young lad making his debut and he was knackered after an hour. Mick took him off but what had happened up to that point made it feel like he took him off to stick his fingers up to the fans a little bit, sort of like, 'right you've had enough of this, he's been brilliant, off he comes'.
"It had been building all season, that tension. There was an incident at Norwich when Ipswich scored what we thought was going to be a late winner [the Canaries went up the other end and equalised at the death] and there was a gesture from Mick towards the fans... if you look at it it's pretty clear what he said [starts with 'F', ends with 'Off']. It was just a deterioration really.
"Mick fostered this 'us against the world' mentality. It was the team's biggest strength for a long time and it became a weakness. Because of how far Ipswich are behind, budget wise, in the Championship, it was always a case of us being against everyone else. In the beginning that included the fans.
"One of Mick's expressions was, 'you're either inside the tent p***ing out or you're outside the tent p***ing in'. At the beginning the fans were inside the tent. By the end it felt like Mick had put them on the outside.
"I don't why that happened, but it did.
"The big frustration was, particularly in home games, you could tell the team was set up to stop the opposition rather than trying to play themselves. It was all about nullifying the opposition. He was like, 'what's the point in taking risks and being 2-0 down?' The fans would say, 'how about taking some risks and being 2-0 up?'
"The fans had enough of that after six years."
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