So, off to Setanta again for the football. It’s a bit of a hike into lonely territory for most people, and a journey too far for some, in these straitened times. But let’s face it, the old argument that England play better on terrestrial television was thoroughly shredded in Croatia and again last night. And let’s face it also — if it’s the whole live, England away experience you’re after, in all its unexpurgated glory, and with chippy counter-pointing from Chris Waddle, you’ve got no choice.

Ahead of us, then, lay an hour’s build-up in the company of Steve McManaman, Sam Allardyce and Terry Venables, all assembled in a white-lit studio seemingly designed to replicate as closely as possible the interior of a spaceship as described by someone who claims to have been abducted by aliens and intimately probed. In this case, though, the spatula and measuring equipment were in the strictly non-intimidating grasp of Angus Scott, who must be the most softly spoken front man in contemporary sports broadcasting and who definitely narrows the gap between live football and late-night jazz radio.

“Fabio Capello may have changed his team line-up, but we’ve kept ours, and our formation,” Scott gently announced. Nice.

But was that a wise tactical move? For one thing, it’s always good to freshen things up and keep the squad on their toes. Otherwise, complacency begins to creep in and you wonder whether people are genuinely playing for their places or simply turning up and expecting to be handed a shirt — or, as it tends to be in this case, a freshly dry-cleaned suit.

More importantly, how happy is Venables sitting out wide on the left of an international punditry panel? Isn’t he happier tucking in? The problem is that Setanta routinely plays Allardyce in the middle of a flat three, with McManaman in the show-pony role on the right, preventing Venables from roaming and enjoying himself the way he used to in the days when it was just him and Des Lynam, winking and laughing at each other.

Obviously, arguments about whether Allardyce and Venables can ever individually reproduce on the Setanta stage their BBC and ITV form are bound to proliferate. And as for the matter of whether or not they can gel . . . well, let’s not get started on that one.

On the pitch, at least, as Scott explained, “The fear factory is working. England are in business.” Mmm. Nice again. As Rio Ferdinand made clear this week, it’s all changed under Capello, a man who apparently has much less time than Sven-Göran Eriksson did for seven-star luxury accommodation in exclusive rural settings. It seems that, on this latest trip, England weren’t even staying at the best hotel in Minsk. And imagine how ropey a hotel must be not to be the best one in Minsk.

It’s a new era. Where once it was all complimentary bathrobes and deluxe slippers, now it’s shared towels and scratchy toilet paper. But the results are there for all to see, in the form of a new emphasis on professionalism and discipline and a slightly decreased emphasis on body-waxing.

Not to mention an ability to beat Belarus, after a sticky period. Far worse was intimated by the mass confusion at the onset last night when both teams emerged in the same coloured tracksuits. Aren’t there Fifa officials who are paid handsomely to ensure that this kind of viewer-baffling clash doesn’t happen?

Things got no less chaotic during the national anthem, when the local orchestra managed to give everybody the slip by playing a half-verse introduction. Not nice. The shame of it was that, perhaps as part of the new Capello discipline drive, we were witnessing an England side prepared, as rarely in recent history, to sing the national anthem in numbers. Even Emile Heskey managed some lip movement, albeit as if practising ventriloquism and possibly while “throwing” his voice across to Wayne Rooney, who, alone, offered a clamped jaw throughout.

Setanta tried to stir up a controversy by suggesting that Wes Brown ducked in the approach to Belarus’s equaliser, despite the fact the ball was well beyond the defender at the time of this alleged act of cowardice. Still, it was nice to see the broadcaster entertain the possibility of criticising the England project, rather than fawning all over it like a lovelorn schoolgirl, as ITV did at the weekend. After all, we’d travelled a long way.