Different tone should be set, a draw is simply not acceptable

While it would clearly be ridiculous to make any kind of judgement on Martin O’Neill’s management after one game, tomorrow’s fixture in Tbilisi does offer a curious kind of acid test — and an immediate point of comparison.

For one, we’ve been in this situation here before. Literally. O’Neill will become the third Irish manager whose first competitive game comes away to Georgia — and that out of the last four, after Brian Kerr and Giovanni Trapattoni.

While the Italian’s September 2008 fixture was moved to neutral Mainz because of that August’s Russo-Georgian conflict, the impressive 2-1 victory still set something of a tone.