Faraway hills happily greener since Euro qualification

What a difference qualification makes. 

Since last Monday week at the Aviva, have you noticed how the wide world of football, when viewed through green-tinted spectacles, suddenly seems like a much more benign, less troubling and even downright attractive place?

Take our old friends Edin Dzeko and Miralem Pjanic for starters. Just a few weeks ago they were regarded in these parts as being about as alluring as the two horsemen of the apocalypse.