HE'S probably had his fill of history this week.

Unfortunately, for Martin O'Neill at least, there's still time for more. The nostalgia peddlers will be packing it in right up until this afternoon's prohibitively early kick-off in Dublin.

A Sunday lunchtime scheduling for an international friendly may seem particularly unsociable but Irish and English footballing powers are hoping it will be quite the opposite. For the history that has swirled overhead throughout the past seven days and more is of a particularly dark shade.

Today's meeting marks England's first visit to Irish shores for 20 years. It is an exile that stretches back to the Lansdowne Road riot of 1995, Dublin's blackest football night when English hooligans began their own premature destruction of the old stadium, hurled benches and debris on Irish supporters from upper tiers, fought Irish police and generally did their country's image a whole pile of damage a year out from England hosting Euro 96.

And so O'Neill has had the grenade of February 1995 hurled his way time and again this week. A potentially incendiary topic, he has dealt with the past professionally, smoothly, diplomatically. But it's hard to escape the feeling that he could have done without having to play part-time statesman.

With another European Championships - next summer's version in France - very much a full-time and pressing priority, with Gordon Strachan's Scotland pitching up to the new Lansdowne next Saturday night, it is arguable that September 2001 is more pertinent this week for Ireland's national football team and their manager than February 1995.

It may seem remarkable to outsiders but it was then - a full 14 years ago - that Ireland last defeated a team ranked above them in a competitive fixture. A Louis van Gaal-led Holland utterly dominated proceedings but Mick McCarthy's heroic hosts somehow came out on top and secured a play-off place for World Cup 2002.

It was the day August turned to September and it couldn't have been a more starkly contrasting time for next Saturday's opposing managers. O'Neill was toasting his own piece of Dutch defiance having guided Celtic past Ajax and back to the Champions League group stages the week before. The international break, however, provided little respite for Gordon Strachan, still struggling to get to grips with Coventry City's relegation from the English top flight that summer. A humbling home defeat to Grimsby seven days later saw him sacked by the Sky Blues.

Nearly a decade and a half, Irish football's most irritating itch hasn't been scratched. It was a sore spot that O'Neill and his expensively assembled backroom team were supposed to salve.

The visit of Scotland offers the latest chance. Some argue it is the best chance. Yet others offer that it is the last. Because now a shade over 18 months into the job, O'Neill remains an Ireland manager who splits national opinions. He splits them three ways - good, bad and indifferent or, more accurately, 'still don't know what the hell to make of him'. It is in the latter category that the overwhelming majority seem to find themselves.

Ireland's footballing public were left in such a stultifying stupor by much - and particularly the final days - of the Giovanni Trapattoni era. There also remain mental scars from the calamitous, at times mortifying, Steve Staunton days. Wounded, fragile, cautious. Opinions are not reached as quickly as they once were. Things weren't helped by O'Neill's marathon settling-in period, a run of eight friendlies before his first competitive encounter that, with just two victories to show from them, actually proved to be far from settling. In the quest to find that victory over a higher-ranked opponent, O'Neill's strategy appeared to involve putting more countries above Ireland than ever before as they slumped to the worst FIFA ranking, 70th, in their history.

Competitive duty has provided just as few answers. Ireland were second seeds in Group D yet find themselves in fourth place at the half-way point, two points behind Scotland and Germany and three behind Poland. But with just Georgia and Gibraltar below them, it still feels like a false position. O'Neill's side have lost just once - at Parkhead in November - but have garnered half of their points in injury time, more than any country on the continent.

Aiden McGeady's winner as the clock ran out in Georgia, John O'Shea stealing a point from the Germans, Shane Long springing from the bench to grab a late, late leveller against the Poles last time out. The four points are a sign of spirit, of dogged determination, sure. But it also makes for a whole lot of playing with fire, a whole lot of relying on chance. This is a management team who are paid millions to provide more than just good luck.

O'Neill, with Roy Keane alongside him and Steves Walford and Guppy in close counsel, hasn't been afraid to make big calls. His most high-profile selection decisions involved Robbie Keane and Shay Given - with 268 caps between them twin pillars of the current Ireland era. Yet both calls looked to be based on little in the way of logic. O'Neill recalled Given to the starting fold at a time when he was still kicking his heels on the Aston Villa bench and incumbent David Forde had done precious little wrong. He demoted captain Keane to the bench at Celtic Park but then proceeded to play two up front for the first time away from home - a formation that would have much better suited international football's record active goalscorer.

Wes Hoolahan, by a distance Ireland's most naturally gifted footballer, is apparently a luxury to be served up exclusively for Dublin audiences yet he has continually excelled in some of the English Championship's least salubrious settings. The Norwich City midfielder is a master playmaker but O'Neill doesn't yet seem to know what plays he wants his team to make. Ireland, as selected and set up by the manager, have started every game of consequence in the group dreadfully only to be readjusted or reinvigorated by a substitute before mustering a late rally. But those who continually leave things late will run out of time eventually.

This is inarguably not the most golden or gifted Irish generations, Hull's demotion to the Championship brought further realism with the Tigers providing a cluster of O'Neill's squad, in which Premier League regulars are thin on the ground. Yet there remains enough talent and quality to compete. Saturday's opposition are all the evidence needed of that. With clear, clean, clever tactics and selections, Strachan has made significant strides with a similarly far from vintage Scotland panel. In trying to argue the merits of both squads this week Aiden McGeady inadvertently hit that very nail on the head.

"I'm looking at our team against Scotland and I'm thinking we have got the better players. But they looked the better team," said the former Celtic winger. "They looked more comfortable in possession. They looked like they knew what they were doing."

It made for a damning indictment. It's high time for O'Neill's Ireland to look like they know what they're doing. In a country lauded the world over for the courage of its convictions in last month's marriage equality referendum when Yes triumphed over No, the one-word verdict on the national team manager is rapidly moving from Undecided to Unconvinced. For his sake and for Ireland's, O'Neill cannot let the clock tick down any further.