While Martin O'Neill's Ireland face a period of introspection after two disappointing results in the 2018 World Cup qualifying group, it's a different story for Michael O'Neill's Northern Ireland.
Having guided the North to Euro 2016 and the knockout stage of that tournament, O'Neill and his team are in with a great shout of qualifying for next year's World Cup.
While top of the group was always going to be a tall order due to the presence of world champions Germany, Northern Ireland have sealed a place in the playoffs (mathematically they could still win the group, although that is highly unlikely) and within a tie of travelling to Russia.
Fresh from a 2-0 win over Czech Republic which followed a 3-0 win in San Marino, O'Neill joined us to explain how he and his side have managed to come this far.
One thing for example is how he names the team and the importance of valuing the role of players in the squad who don't get much game-time.
"I personally don't hide my team from the players. I don't name the team but I don't think they have to be Einstein to work it out whether they're going to start or not. There's consistency in terms of the line-ups we use. We obviously rotate players within it as well," he said.
"You have to give them as much time as possible, as much opportunity to be ready to play."
Northern Ireland's Jonny Evans celebrates scoring his sides first goal against Czech Republic ©INPHO/Presseye/William Cherry
He also explained where the emphasis is in training.
"A lot of the stuff we do in training is designed to try and create what the game is going to be like. There's no point in doing a lot of work, for example, on possession and passing and attacking way if you're going to play Germany because that's not how the game is going to be realistically. So it's trying to show them how the game will be," he said, emphasising that with only three or four days to prepare, that has to be fine tuned.
"A perfect example is earlier in the campaign, we had 34% possession at home to Azerbaijan but we won the game 4-0. So it's all those little things, when you layer them all on top of each other, you get a team that believes in itself."
And in what is increasingly a squad game, O'Neill pointed out that in his ranks, the load is being spread around the camp.
"We get more and more contributions from players that maybe don't have the profile and people don't anticipate that they'll give as much as they do."
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