The dawn of a fascinating new chapter for Irish football

Even among those who had long been looking forward to the dawn of the Stephen Kenny era, there is bound to be — and most certainly should be — huge sympathy for Mick McCarthy that his second coming has ended the way it has: With an early and abrupt handover as the timing of the Ireland managerial succession plan, as originally envisaged when it was unveiled in November 2018, finally fell foul, like so much else in football, of the game-changing impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Uefa’s decision last Wednesday to indefinitely postpone the play-off match against Slovakia beyond June was the trigger for the FAI to act swiftly and decisively on the basis of the terms of the deal which had been signed up to by both managers and which the current administration had inherited from the John Delaney regime.