So what do I think of the World Cup draw, I hear you ask? Well, like most followers of the beautiful game, and many people who know bugger all about it, my instant reaction was one of considerable alarm.

Mention Italy in the same sentence as the Republic of Ireland and there is an immediate sense of foreboding, a distinct feeling that we are highly likely to have the shit kicked out of us.

It’s just a cultural thing, a natural sense of inferiority which has been cultivated over many years, and with very good reason. The pundits were quick to point out that we have never managed to get a result against Italy in all the times we have played them. But then, the same could be said about our relationship with many other nations as well. It was just the way that things were done.

From a starting point of fear and loathing, my perspective has gradually altered, and now I am looking forward to nothing less than a victory for the Republic in this opening tie . . . (A famous victory, perhaps? – Ed) A draw would be the probable outcome if the Italians got lucky.

You see, teams like Italy, good teams, regard these preliminary games as a bit of a drudge, a nasty little obstacle designed to land them with a few injuries and yellow cards as a burden to be borne when the real tournament starts, at the quarter-final stage.

We, on the other hand, will approach the contest like wild animals, and they will hardly relish having to put themselves about against what they perceive to be a shower of uncouth rustics.

In addition, that knee-jerk instinct which told us that we were doomed when the word ‘Italy’ was mentioned rather overlooked the fact that if they are capable of beating seven shades of shite out of us, they are equally capable of knocking as many shades of the brown stuff out of Mexico and Norway.

I don’t understand how people expected us to somehow get an “easy” draw, one way or the other. I would have appreciated South Korea or Saudi Arabia but overall, the draw is only middling hard. Think of poor Sweden, going to war with Brazil, Cameroon, and Bulgaria.

Not a pretty prospect for our friends from the frozen north, who have established something of a tradition of returning home from the World Cup in disgrace, and being spat at by small boys at the airport.

The way we reacted to the prospect of a few difficult-looking matches, you would think that there is a widespread suspicion that the Republic are pretty crap, really. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth!

Having extracted a good result, possibly the full three points, from the illustrious boys in blue, Mexico will pose different problems.

Yet, we will be on a high for this match, contemplating the fact that a chastened Italy will be getting a bit peevish at this stage, and will hopefully inflict it on the rest of the group with maximum ferocity.

Of Mexico, little is known.

Well, that is not quite true, because we know that tequila comes from Mexico, that the Aztecs were decent poor divils, that they pronounce it Mehico, that Pancho Villa was a gas ticket and that their citizens flee to the United States in even greater numbers than our own.

Little, though, is yet known about the projected pattern of this game between the wetbacks and the greenbacks, other than a dim vision of these tricky little geezers running rings around us as our players collapse from heat exhaustion and general grief.

I do not think that we will be extra-happy after this enervating encounter, and that is as much as I can say right now.

On, then, to Norway, who beat England rather easily, I seem to recall, though as I have repeatedly pointed out, this is something that can be said of many a team these days. It is almost becoming a basic badge of nationhood.

On paper, the quality of their personnel is not dissimilar to our own, although they think that they are Denmark whereas we don’t give a bollocks what we are like as long as Aldo gets on the end of something.

The match, of course, will probably not be played on paper, unless the Americans cock it up by laying the wrong surface.

Norway think that they are the cat’s pyjamas at the moment, these World Cup virgins tackling hardened old shaggers like ourselves. I think that we can put them in their place, (hopefully, their place is not the last sixteen).

In the meantime, a specially-trained team of sniffer dogs under the tutelage of Maurice “Red” Setters, has been despatched to scrape at the dressing-room doors of England, hot on the scent of players with an Irish blood-cell about their person.

I do not particularly approve of this practice, but I suspect that “Red” and Big Jack can withstand a bit of ribbing, not to mention abject humiliation, if they can find a lad who will do a job for them, and play a bit of football while he’s at it, in that order. The mysterious Phil Babb is already on board, and with the hounds circling around Brian Stein and Stan Collymore, the days of the all-black Republic eleven are just around the corner.

As I write, the sages are pondering that ancient riddle, “whither Paul McGrath?”

The knees, the knees.