The dangers of the salad days

For Irish football, this is the calm before the storm.

The Euros squad has been announced, the first batch of players will arrive in Dublin on Thursday and the rest will follow three days later. Then it’s all about preparation and anticipation, with initial work in Malahide followed by the farewell friendly against Bosnia, a week of warm-weather training in Tuscany, a game against Hungary in Budapest and then onto Ireland’s Baltic Sea base camp in Poland for the final countdown to the big kick-off against Croatia in Poznan on June 10.

Which sounds, on paper, all fine and dandy, except that we know only too well that a storm can always blow up unexpectedly to disturb the calmest and most careful of preparations.