Basel a year later. The 91st minute of Tel Aviv in March 2005. Lansdowne for the return and a 2-0 lead thrown away. Cyprus that October.

Switzerland at Lansdowne four days later, the end of Brian Kerr. Thrashings at the hands of Holland and Cyprus in 2006. San Marino in 2007, the ultimate low.

It's the kind of graph that used to make Enron executives tell the barman to leave the bottle. There'd be the odd spike in there for sure . . . Roy Keane's return, the Stade de France performance in 2004, the odd friendly under Kerr where the defending was staunch and the passing smart and sure and encouraging. But never has there been any sort of sustained upward mobility to speak of, never once a point where you could be happy it was going in the right direction.

Until now. It's coming up on 11 months since Ireland lost a match. This time last year, they hadn't won two competitive games back to back in almost four years; the Slovakia game in Croke Park back in March was their fourth qualifying victory in a row (granted, the first two of them were against San Marino).

Results in friendlies come with the usual terms and conditions applied but there's no ignoring the fact that 4-0 away to Denmark is a world removed from 0-4 at home to Holland.

Over the course of a year, the graph has changed direction and proper, concrete, noarguments progress has been made. Which is all anyone ever asked for.

Players have been unearthed. People sneered at the idea of reintroducing the B international last November but from that scoreless draw with Scotland in Tolka Park there came forth five players who played last Wednesday in Aarhus.

Darren Potter, Shane Long, Stephen Hunt, Andy Keogh and Darron Gibson might all have played for Ireland at some stage and they might not but what their places in the current squad point to more than anything is the fact that Steve Staunton decided at some stage last year to stop bemoaning his lack of options and instead employ some fresh thinking.

Nobody's saying they're made men now but we are, at least, getting to the point where there's some doubt over who will and won't make the squad from game to game.

The point is, this is all undeniably positive stuff and to remark on it and laud it is not to get carried away (just as, by the way, to criticise when things weren't going so well a year ago wasn't to slam or to coarse or roast . . . not everything's either a kiss or a fistfight). It doesn't particularly matter that Denmark didn't over-exert themselves once they went behind on Wednesday or that they had a goalkeeper who played like he was wearing roller-skates.

What matters was that there was evidence of a plan, just as there had been in Croke Park against Slovakia, just as there had been in America in May.

And the impressive thing about it is that it isn't one for this campaign. Instead of just talking about his harshlyderided four-year plan, Staunton has started to implement it. The frustrating thing about him when he spoke around the time of Cyprus and San Marino of being in a transition period was that it seemed nothing more than a phrase to him, one of those stock things football people say when they're looking to explain away the dross they're serving up. But the B international, the American trip . . . these were the steps he took to make shapes at bringing about real transition, real change. We're just over a year out from the first qualifying game for South Africa 2010 and because of these games, Staunton looks to have some depth to play with.

Austria and Switzerland next summer still looks unlikely but that really should never have been the point of this campaign anyway. The big hope when Staunton took over was that there'd be some fizz in the Irish national side again and that eventually they'd get back to a point where they could consider qualification for big tournaments a real possibility again. The trip to Bratislava and Prague next month will either quash or feed that hope this time around but, even if it doesn't work out, there doesn't exist the same cause for fret and bother there was this time a year ago.

In that, at least, a corner has been turned.