Let’s start on the road to Rio right now

Hard to believe, but it was this very day 24 years ago that the Republic of Ireland thumbed its nose at the mighty Soviet empire with a display of skill and conviction in Hanover that, while lacking the desired result, kept our hopes of qualification very much alive.

A quarter of a century later and that team’s failure to reward itself appropriately with two points rather than one still sticks in the craw and yet how spoiled we were by a ride that never once let up until the end of that baking day in Gelsenkirchen.

What we would give for such heartbreak now.