Sharp O’Neill knows when to play the joker

This time it won’t quite feel like walking on eggshells with Roy around.

Martin is around as well. If anything emerged from the new Irish manager’s press conference and all the profiles about him over the weekend, it is that the man has a sense of humour. Some of the hacks didn’t always get it last Saturday but the players will. At times it will arm them with confidence, at times it will disarm any arrogance and at others diffuse any overload of tension.

It’s something he probably picked up from the dad’s barber shop in Kilrea and really understood the value of in his time playing for Brian Clough. More than once, when the old maestro and his sidekick Peter Taylor sensed the players were overly tense before a big game, they’d tell the players a joke and out they’d go, suitably relaxed to perform.