Imagine what any of today’s pampered generation of sportsmen would have said if faced with similar travel arrangements. Yaya Touré’s agent would have been on the phone demanding a transfer immediately; Ronaldo would have balked at the lack of provision for vanity mirrors in the box; Roy Keane would have raged at the characteristic parsimony of the Irish FA: where was the choice of inflight movies? Spiers, though, merely brushed himself down and stuck out his thumb. What a man. What a magnificent, reckless, bonkers thing to do.