VIDEO: England game best forgotten, now for a tilt at Scotland

Republic of Ireland 0 England 0: The good news: 20 years on from the Lansdowne riot, this meeting of Ireland and England in Dublin passed off without major incident.

The bad news: so did the football.

But, for once, we won’t quibble too much about that. The lunchtime kick-off time, combined with mild temperatures and mainly blue skies, created an atmosphere sleepy enough to suck any possible tension from the occasion, turning the event into something like a cross between a matinee performance and a summer barbecue. And no-one was ever about to lose sight of the fact that both these teams have bigger fish to fry next weekend.