It is not often that the four British international teams and the Republic of Ireland put together half-decent performances in their opening Euro qualifiers, but that was almost the case earlier this week, although Wales did not exactly cover themselves in glory.
All playing away from home, four of the five teams won, while the sole loser, Scotland, put on their best showing in ages in a brave 2-1 defeat against world champions Germany.
Wales, however, were breathing a sigh of relief after narrowly escaping a huge embarrassment by scraping past Andorra 2-1. This was against a team ranked 199th in the world, which had lost their previous 44 matches and had not scored a goal in four years.
It was admittedly a rather strange game played on a dodgy artificial pitch and featured a controversial penalty awarded to Andorra by the fifth official standing behind the goal. Nonetheless, Wales made heavy weather of it until Gareth Bale stepped up with two goals. Newspapers could not resist the headline, "Bale gets Wales Out Of Jail".
Wales, under the not particularly popular manager Chris Coleman, are faced with a long-standing problem. Over the years they have fielded a wealth of talented individual stars, but there has never been enough of them at one time to form a consistent team.
They have produced some of the best players in British football — John Charles, Ivor Allchurch, Ian Rush, Mark Hughes, John Toshack, Ryan Giggs and now Bale. But they haven’t qualified for the European Championship since 1976. Unfortunately, like George Best with Northern Ireland, we are never likely to see Bale display his skills in the World Cup finals.
Pulling off a much more impressive win were 95th-ranked Northern Ireland, with a 2-1 victory in Budapest over the once formidable Hungary. It was their first away win in four years and only the second success for manager Michael O’ Neill in more than two years.
Two goals from Kyle Lafferty and Niall McGinn in the last 10 minutes was enough to give the 1,100 away supporters plenty to shout about and possibly give just a faint glimmer of hope of reaching the Euro finals for the first time. In the qualifiers for the 1984 tournament they actually beat Germany home and away, but somehow still failed to make it.
The Republic of Ireland got off to a good start with an important 2-1 away win over Georgia, thanks to a brace of goals by Everton’s Aiden McGeady celebrating his 70th cap. Manager Martin O’Neil was particularly impressed by McGeady’s cracking 90th-minute winner which he called "a stroke of genius".
It’s not often that a defeat feels like a victory but that was the case for Scotland in their narrow loss to Germany in which two Thomas Mueller goals proved decisive. The Daily Telegraph called it "a gutsy and tactically astute performance" while the Independent observed "the scare they gave the world champions gives them real encouragement."
Manager Gordon Strachan, who must have feared a hammering, said "I actually thought we were going to win at one stage" and the impressive 5,000 travelling supporters went home happy with the performance, if not the result.
Scotland’s goal was a fine individual effort from little-known Watford winger Ikechi Anya. The Glasgow-born player has an interesting background, with a Nigerian father and Romanian mother, both of them respected academics.
Anya, who began his football career at Wycombe Wanderers, was delighted to have scored against the world champions.
"It is the best emotion I have ever felt in football," he said.
Having spent three years with clubs in Spain, Anya is also regularly called upon at Watford to translate for their three Spanish-speaking players.
One of the most surprising results was England’s 2-0 win away to Switzerland, arguably their toughest fixture in the qualifiers. Even more surprising for many fans was the identity of the goalscorer, Danny Wellbeck, who took both of his opportunities well.
Fans tend not to think of Wellbeck as a prolific scorer and they are right — those were his first goals in his last nine England appearances. His overall record is 10 goals in 28 appearances, which is passable considering his Manchester United tally was 20 goals in 90 matches. How he turns out at Arsenal remains to be seen.
Liverpool winger Raheem Sterling was once again lively and is quickly becoming a key player for England. As the Daily Mail headline noted: "Sterling is Our Silva".
The normally mild-mannered Roy Hodgson has been increasingly irritated by the English media’s negative attitude to his team, although this is quite a familiar situation for any England boss — grey hairs come with the job.
England’s disappointing performance in Brazil hurt Hodgson much more than probably many people realise. Talking about the World Cup to the Guardian this week Hodgson said: "It was an incredible blow which took me a good few weeks of solitude in America to get my head even half right.’’
England’s next two games are San Marino and Estonia and Hodgson’s hardest job will be to make sure complacency doesn’t creep into his squad. England should win these games comfortably, but fans will be expecting big scores and fast-flowing football, which most likely will not happen.
Being in a easy-looking group is something of a double-edged sword. Hodgson won’t really know what his team is capable of until they start playing in the actual tournament in France in 2016, assuming they get there of course. After all, they have to overcome San Marino first.