Republic of Ireland 3 Kazakhstan 1: Like the budget that preceded it by a few hours, this low key but ultimately fairly comfortable Irish win will be greeted by the optimists as containing glimpses of a brighter future to come.

On the football front, though, like the financial one there is still an awful lot of work to be done. If it’s to start next month under a new manager then Noel King can return to the sidelines with a certain sense of satisfaction after his two game stint.

The win here was welcome and may well prove significant in terms of the seeding next time out while the team’s superiority over the 90 minutes was generally beyond question.

The tactical transformation remains very much a work in progress but to have expected anything else would surely have been foolish, especially if you believed the starting point was the stoneage.

In the event, Robbie Keane’s 61 goals for his country along with a rather rarer one for john O’Shea and a second half own goal ensured an Irish victory that had not really seemed to be in all that much doubt even when the home side brought trouble on itself and conceded an early goal.

King’s reshaping of the side was along broadly expected lines with Marc Wilson reverting to left back, James McCarthy to a deeper lying midfield position and Anthony Stokes to the left of the three who sat behind Robbie Keane.

In the centre, Andy Reid returned after his extended sabbatical while Kevin Doyle switched flanks in a side that was clearly geared more towards attack than the one selected on Friday night had been. And almost from the off the prospects of a profitable night looked good with the Kazakhs looking vulnerable on the back foot and their goalkeeper, Andrey Sidelnikov, uncertain under any sort of pressure.

Unfortunately, the hosts had problems in that department too and it was they who were to be punished first. Séamus Coleman, having been lucky already when Maxat Baizhanov headed over from three yards after the full back had been too slow to prevent Alexander Kislitsyn crossing, was the culprit for the goal with his weak attempt to recover after completely missing an attempted clearance, enabling Andrey Karpovich to clear the way for a Dmitriy Shomko strike that clattered the inside of the far post as it flew in from almost 30 yards.

Thankfully it was something of a low point and Ireland were back on terms within a couple of minutes thanks to Kislitsyn’s bewildering decision to handle a Reid destined, it seemed, for Dunne’s head.

Keane’s penalty to the bottom right corner was cool as you like.

Not much else went quite so smoothly but the Irish did settle down a little over time and began to assert themselves as the better team.

Before he was stretchered off with what looked like a serious enough knee injury, Gibson struck up a promising looking partnership with McCarthy and Everton boss Roberto Martinez looked understandably put out when the northerner came down awkwardly as he tried to reclaim possession after Reid had carelessly given it away.

The Dubliner may have been trying a little too hard to make an impact at that stage because there had not been much to show for his efforts further upfield, just behind Keane.

His set pieces were generally good, though, and the corner he delivered 26 minutes led to Ireland taking the lead even if Sdelnikov’s contribution – a parry to the feet of O’Shea after Dunne had headed goalwards – was fairly critical to it all.

Still, the Waterfordman’s finish from close range was better than might have been expected from someone bagging his second international goal in 93 appearances.

At the other end, he and Dunne looked comfortable together and as things opened up a little in the second half the whole game plan seemed to take shape a bit more.

Reid certainly grew into things and Glenn Whelan did well alongside the consistently influential McCarthy, whose angled pass presented the returned exile with his best moment of the night just before he departed on 75 minutes.

Reid’s dummy was met with equally quick thinking by Keane whose first time return pass presented the advancing midfielder with the chance to shoot first time. Had the connection been only slightly better it might well have earned him a goal.

Stokes had his moments too even if his end product was again disappointing. The Celtic striker passed up his best chance of the night this time in order to play the ball back to Reid when he really should have had a crack himself but he wasn’t the only one guilty of failing to seize a moment of opportunity over the course of the evening.

Still, he made amends with his role for the third goal, retrieving what looked a lost cause – it had actually gone out of play – for the recently arrived Aiden McGeady, who cut in from the left and played a low square ball that Doyle got a touch to before Shomko, with Keane breathing down his neck, turned it into his own net.

Kazakh substitute Igor Yurin might have grabbed a consolation effort for the visitors not long after with a curling effort that flew just wide of Forde’s post.

In stark contrast to Friday evening, though, the goalkeeper was almost anonymous here after his side’s somewhat uncertain settling in period.

By Irish standards, even at home, that alone might be regarded as some small amount of progress and, for all the enduring flaws, would-be managers are sure to have seen the basis of something here on which they will believe they can build on between now and next September.