Evening all, and welcome to Ireland v Georgia!

Away we go!

Elsewhere...

The anthems are playing.

He's also hoping Ireland's wingers will give them speed on the counter - I guess they will - but I wonder if there's enough technical still in the team to get the ball from one end to the other at pace.

John O'Shea is in co-commentary - he thinks the main thing is for Ireland to win. Great stuff.

The players are in the tunnel ... and here they come!

McCarthy explains that Whelan will sit in with Hourihane and Hendrick allowed to go forward and explains that Doherty and Maguire are out because of the change of shape. I wonder if Doherty might do a better job on the right-wing than Brady, but here we are.

My guess is that Ireland will look to get the ball forward as quickly as possible. More news as I get it.

Jonathan Walters reckons McGoldrick, who starts up front, will lead the press and also be important in holding the ball up. He's having a pretty good season, with 12 goals and three assists from 36 appearances, but at 32 isn't getting better.

McCarthy's squad nowadays is nothing like the one he once had. His first team in his first spell as manager was: Given, Staunton, Kernaghan, McGrath, Phelan; McAteer, Keane, Townsend, Kennedy; Aldridge, Quinn. Not bad.

I must say, I like what Ireland have done appointing Stephen Kenny as their next manager. Succession planning works in pretty much every other field of human endeavour, so why not football? And given Ireland's narrow talent-pool, the best way of improving is with someone who knows the young players and can bring them along - this is more or less exactly what we've seen with England and Gareth Southgate.

Mick McCarthy is nothing if not brutally honest, and he had some words to say about the 1-0 win over Gibraltar:

“I didn’t enjoy a single minute of it until the final whistle. We were playing against a team with nothing to lose and everything to gain. The game was played in a howling gale and the surface didn’t help either but I’m not using any of that as an excuse; we haven’t played terribly well, but I said that we could only create momentum by winning a game and that’s exactly what we have done.”

In different times, this would be a nice group for Ireland. Switzerland and Denmark are better than them, but you'd not be surprised to see either beaten in Dublin. That could still happen now, but it's hard to see Ireland matching the rest of their results. But you never know, and with those two meeting tonight in Basel, a win and Ireland are clear at the top.

Ireland will find Georgia tricky opponents. Partly because Georgia are tricky - it took Switzerland until the 57th minute to take the lead against them the other night, and until the 80th minute to seal it - and partly because, well, Ireland aren't all that good. Tonight will be intense in one way or another, but it won't be pretty.

I'd like to know: why all surnames but one begin with K, and why the one that doesn't doesn't.

Georgia don't appear to have a Twitter version of their XI, so here it is:

Lloria; Kakabasdze, Khocholava, Kverkvelia, Kashia; Kiteishvili, Kvekveskiri, Kankava, Gvilia, Arveladze; Kvilitaia.

I'm surprised that Doherty has been omitted - Brady is a fair alternative, but it's Doherty who'll be a key man in this campaign.