Main man Whelan ready to green Trap’s new boy

EARLY September. A time for new beginnings in schoolyards the length and breadth of the country and in the similarly boyish surroundings of professional dressing rooms across Europe.

Players have already become accustomed to the changing hierarchies at their respective clubs in England, Scotland and further afield in recent weeks and now that process is being mirrored at international level.

Not least in the make-up of the Irish midfield which will line out in Yerevan tomorrow, one which will be radically different to that which kicked off the side’s last qualifying campaign against Georgia in Mainz.