Ireland seek fresh start after Euros heartache

It will be only five o’clock at home this evening but ten o’clock at night here in Kazakhstan when Ireland kick off their World Cup qualifying campaign in the intimate but impressive surroundings of the Astana Arena.

Think of a scaled-down Millennium Stadium or even a fully enclosed Thomond Park and you’ll get some idea of the appeal of the 30,000 capacity stadium which was only opened three years ago. But then in amazing Astana, the youngest capital in the world and a place where almost every other building seems to have been freshly constructed and vividly illuminated just moments before you’ve arrived, the Arena is hardly out of place with its exterior bubble-wrapping, retractable roof and synthetic pitch.

The latter is a necessary response to the ferocious winters which can see temperatures drop as low as minus 25 degrees. But the weather won’t be a factor tonight. Blue skies and warm sunshine have been the order of the day here since the team’s arrival but, with the setting of the sun, there is an immediate and sharp cooling off which, even this early in September, already hints at the bone-chilling extremes to come.