It won’t be long now until the Euros kick-off...

For the newest generation of Irish football fans, Euro ‘88 belongs to the remote past. France 2016 will be their first time, and just maybe, let’s hope, the best of times too.

Long before he did the world no little service by co-creating Ted, Dougal, Jack, Mrs Doyle and the rest of the Craggy Island crew, comedy writer Arthur Mathews was a colleague of mine in Hot Press, where we were among a group of like-minded souls hopelessly devoted to the beautiful game.

Except that, where Irish football was concerned, I recall that it was easier in those days to discern more things of beauty in our domestic affiliations (Drogheda United in Arthur’s case, Shamrock Rovers in mine) than in the misfortunes of the national team, where the pain of defeat — especially of that uniquely brutal kind occasioned by those dodgy refereeing decisions which must haunt Eoin Hand to this day — tended to be the norm.