Another one for the road for Trapattoni

IT isn’t so long since we faced the prospect of Irish national teams playing their home games on foreign soil while Lansdowne Road was being given its facelift.

Nights like this make you think that might not have been a bad thing.

Often so ponderous and tentative in Dublin, Giovanni Trapattoni’s side bring a clarity of purpose with them when they pack their bags for the continent. So it was in the A. Le Coq Arena in Tallinn last night.

Sure there was some nervy moments: shots landing on Shay Given’s net, whizzing by his post and a pair of penalty calls from the home crowd, but that is only to be expected in a foreign capital when the stakes are raised so high.

This 4-0 win takes to 11 the run of undefeated games away from home in competitive fixtures and who would have thought that possible after the 5-2 disaster in Cyprus or the get-out-of-jail-free card played by Stephen Ireland in San Marino?

Since then and before last night, Ireland had picked up results in Mainz, Podgorica, Bari, Sofia, Paris, Yerevan, Zilina, Skopje, Moscow, Andorra. Most were tests far greater than last night’s but none were navigated with such poise.

This was the first time that an Irish team had scored four goals away from home since the friendly defeat of Denmark in Aarhus in 2007 and the biggest competitive win on the road since the same scoreline was achieved in Cyprus a decade ago.

The scoreline may surprise but the result certainly does not.

Losing was simply not an option here. Nor was it likely. The local preference for sports such as cross-country skiing and basketball over the global game became even more apparent in the hours leading up to the late-night kick-off.

The sight of fans perusing city maps to check which bus or tram would take them to the football stadium is nothing unusual on evenings such as this but there were as many wearing blue scarves as green in Tallinn.

Estonia is a national side belatedly leaving base camp after years of false starts but one that suddenly found itself further up the mountain than it might have anticipated. It was always likely to be within Ireland’s compass to induce them with a bout of altitude sickness.

All of which isn’t to play down a 4-0 win.

The A. Le Coq Arena may only be a 10,000-seater but, with its steep stands and cantilevered roof on three sides, it is similar to any number of French rugby grounds where the atmosphere makes a mockery of the numbers.

So it was last night, even if the hordes left it until the last hour to descend en masse. In a country with this climate, that is easily understood but the visitors never gave the local players or supporters to warm top their task.

This was clinical, this was professional.

Robbie Keane spoke earlier in the week about how this Irish team has matured since Paris two years ago and that was evident in all they did. Their ratio of chances made to chances taken was enormous.

Estonian manager Tarmo Ruutli had paid his opponents a neat compliment the day before the game. When he watched Ireland on DVD, he said, he sometimes dreamed that it was his team and they were his players, such were their quality.

It smacked of the ultimate line in pre-match psychological warfare when it was uttered but perhaps Ruutli had realised the disparity between a side that boasts a clutch of English Premier League players and another that draws its ranks from the world’s lesser leagues.

Those dreams for Ruutli will have been nightmares last night.

What now of all the critics — this one included — who have lamented the way this team goes about its business on the park? That debate will raise its head again, especially if Ireland draw a side of Spain or Germany’s quality next year but it is one for another day.

Form, style and every other debate that has attached itself limpet-like to the national team in recent years was locked in cold storage last night as Trapattoni’s side went about its business in the sub-zero temperatures of the Estonian capital.

After this, Trapattoni will have his new contract. The only questions now are for how long and how much. What a difference one night makes.