Apart from the obvious exception, Mick McCarthy had a solid record in season-starting competitive internationals during his first spell with Ireland.
From his 11 games that mattered in either August or September, Ireland won seven times, drew twice and lost twice.
The defeats were away to Croatia in 1999 and then most notably in Russia shortly after the explosive 2002 World Cup.
That 4-2 defeat in Moscow was the beginning of the end for McCarthy.
The clamour to have Roy Keane reinstated grew by the week thereafter and culminated on the night of the 2-1 defeat to the Swiss at the old Lansdowne Road.
Fans turned on the team and the manager and after some soul searching, McCarthy stepped away from the job two-and-a-half weeks later.
But among those 11 games were important wins over Yugoslavia and of course Holland, famously so, having built on a September draw away to the Dutch the year before.
Tonight, McCarthy is just as eager to add another significant scalp to that list and put Ireland in the driving seat for automatic Euro 2020 qualification.
“Whether history continues and repeats itself, who knows, let’s hope it does,” he said last night.
“Switzerland are a very good side. They’ve been in the major competitions for the last 15 or 20 years and qualify almost every two years so all our focus is on them.
“But we had good results towards the end of last season so the lads are coming in on the back of two good results.
“We understand each other and there’s not been that many changes to the squad, there’s been no real upsets in terms of anyone dropping out.
“There’s a couple injured but it’s pretty settled. If we can take that harmony that’s around the place at the minute, maybe we can start with a good result.”
All week - publicly at least - McCarthy has played down the notion that he is on some sort of revenge mission against the Swiss a full 17-years on.
“I’ve parked that one,” he said, bluntly. “That’s gone. It’s only the fact that I’m now playing them again that it gets brought up.
“It would have been nice to have left unbeaten (at home) in qualifying games. But I didn’t. And I’ve had a lot of games since then.”
Sitting top with 10 points at the halfway stage, Ireland’s toughest tests are to come with two games against the Swiss, an away game in Georgia before the Danes at home.
Earlier this week, McCarthy said that while he wants to win, he would take a point.
But the value of three is not lost on him and he said: “We can do ourselves a favour and put ourselves in a really strong position (with a win).
"We can certainly dent their hopes if we beat them but you could be asking their manager the same question and he would probably say the same thing about us.”
Switzerland dropped two points at home to Denmark in March after blowing a 3-0 lead with nine minutes to go, drawing 3-3.
But McCarthy claims it is Ireland who are under pressure tonight, not the top ranked side in this group.
He said: “We’re under pressure to get a good result as it is our home game. Whatever they feel does not affect me.
“I don't get into that and the pressure is on us and we have to do something tonight.”
The Ireland boss continued: “They’ve got a squad where the one player who’s not there (Xherdan Shaqiri) is what everyone wants to talk about.
“We’ve not got that. No upheavals, no upsets. We’ve a settled way of playing and a settled squad.
“We didn’t approach the game in Denmark in the sense of sitting back and trying to defend. We wanted to be on the front foot and we’ll be doing exactly the same tonight.”
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