Ireland v Georgia: Only pleasure here was winning

A beautiful autumnal evening on Lansdowne Road. A pitch that would put your living room carpet to shame and an opponent ranked over a hundred places below them on Fifa’s world rankings.

This was about as far removed from Ireland’s tricky World Cup group opener in Belgrade last month as possible. No pre-match deluge to deal with. No clumps of earth to sabotage the first touch. No unfamiliar surroundings.

No excuses, basically.