Some names are bracketed together forever. It's a long time since Mick McCarthy and David O' Leary were battling it out for a place in Jack Charlton's affections. The details of the decisive events in their relationship are well known. O'Leary opted not to go to the infamous triangular tournament in Iceland.

Charlton was slow to forgive. McCarthy went, won the only medal he ever won playing for Ireland, gave the medal to his friend Charlie O' Leary and came home established as Jack Charlton's type of centre half.

How odd that an enmity, (friendly rivalry as footballers would euphemistically call it) which was established a decade and a half ago should continue by virtue of the pair emerging as the Republic of Ireland's most high-profile soccer managers.

They are both at key turns in their career just now. McCarthy manages the team which O'Leary used to bitterly resent being left out of. O'Leary manages the side which McCarthy used to go and watch as a kid growing up in Barnsley.

It's impossible to consider the fortunes of one without assessing those of the other. Each has influenced the others career and demeanour greatly.

McCarthy's efficiency prolonged O'Leary's exile. Friends and media advocates of David O'Leary were apt to take flame throwers to McCarthy for years after Iceland, inflicting a long list of insults and wounds which not only ignored the results Ireland achieved with McCarthy playing, but which informed, to this day, the gruff paranoia with which he approaches the media.

As for O'Leary, it seems as if (as was once said of George Bush Snr) he was born with a silver foot in his mouth. He says daft things sometimes and wrong things sometimes and always he says lots. Yet he has one of those personalities to which nothing sticks.

Nobody takes his inconsistencies and holds them up on the courtroom of public opinion demanding an explanation. He has that messianic self-belief which defies arguments.

Why would they argue anyway? He's winning. After a playing career based on an immaculate sense of positioning his time in management has been helped considerably by being in the right place at the right time.

Fairness demands recognition of the style with which O' Leary has approached the game. On Saturday he went to Middlesboro and played three strikers away from home, wrapping up the game before it was quarter of an hour old. His rise may have been fortune-tinged but it's hard to think of a test he has failed.

As a Leeds fan I must confess that Dave O'Leary's tenure is something of a joyful mystery. Yet, Leeds keep producing results and keep getting the sweet roll of the dice. Last season collective paralysis overcame Liverpool in the final weeks of the season and Leeds stumbled into the Champions League, needing a bigger squad and a more experienced squad.

No problem thought those of us who have become accustomed to doing the Peter Ridsdale maths primer. David O' Leary took the job on guarantee of at least £12 million being available. Instead, Leeds had a net spend of about u11 £11 million.

This summer, with the Champions League looming, Leeds transferred experienced players like Haaland, Hopkins and Hiden. Batty was lost to long-term injury. Woodgate and Bowyer continued to have court appearances hanging over them. Kewell was yearning for the Olympic Games in Sydney.

So Leeds purchased Olivier Dacourt, a good but suspension-prone midfielder and Mark Viduka, a sort of walking lucky bag of talents and tribulations and Dominic Matteo, unwanted at Liverpool and injured for the next two months. Speaking of the next two months, astonishingly Leeds didn't seem to wrap up the issue of the Olympic Games with Viduka before he signed.

Viduka wants to play for his country in the Olympics in his home town. As Dave O'Leary often said while looking back in anger at the cold war between himself and Jack Charlton which followed Iceland, there is no greater honour than to play for your country.

ALL this and the hubris-laden decision to make O'Leary the best-paid manager in Britain looked to this hoary old fatalist like the recipe for disaster. Instead, Leeds' unblemished pre-season record has continued into real time.

Two wins out of two in the league, while with some aplomb they dispatched 1860 Munich from the Champions League first round. Leeds were rewarded on Friday with one of those glamorous but hopeless draws in the League section.

Having to travel to Istanbul while also mixing it with Barcelona and AC Milan is as good as it gets for a club not expecting to be in for the long haul. Leeds won't win the European Cup but the blame won't be laid on David O'Leary's shoulders. Nor should it be.

Mick McCarthy could be forgiven for wondering about how consistently football's rules of forgiving and forgetting are applied. He starts another campaign this week, cursed by having Holland and Portugal up first. Regardless of the gradient, McCarthy will get the blame if Ireland don't reach the top of this hill.

McCarthy's babies have produced their better (if not most rewarding) performances in recent years away from home against superior opposition, yet there is an odd feeling abroad that gallantry won't be enough this time.

As a leader, Mick McCarthy wears his worries on his face these days. Even when he's right he invites argument. He doesn't carry that cigar chomping infectious arrogance that Jack Charlton, for instance, had. O'Leary does. He bounces about with the straightforward certainties of a winner.

When you are about to climb mountains the demeanour of the group leader is half of the battle. There should be no more disgrace attached to brave failure against Holland and Portugal than against Barcelona and Milan, but the vultures are shadowing McCarthy while the sparrows are singing on O'Leary's shoulder.

If, for no better reason than that, Mick McCarthy deserves a decent result next week, he deserves to walk away from Amsterdam with a little lightness in his step, all, paranoia, all arguments and all comparisons suspended for a while.