New campaign will define Trap’s tenure

IF THE prospect of a long, dark winter ahead fills you with gloom, there might be some consolation in reflecting that, while it seems like only yesterday Ireland’s 2010 World Cup campaign came to a shuddering halt, by this time next week the first match of the 2012 European Championship qualifiers will already be part of history. A game for all seasons, football’s big wheel is ever in spin.

Of course, Paris was one of those sporting events which, for reasons still too painful to revisit in detail, had an unusually extended shelf life.

Yet, despite the sense that we’re still in recovery from November’s events in the Stade de France, a lot has actually changed in the big world of football since the boys in green last kicked a ball in anger, not least the collapse in status of former superpowers France and Italy on the back of their almost comically woeful misadventures in South Africa.