Hodgson hopes the past stays in the past

England manager Roy Hodgson has called on England fans to behave themselves in Dublin this weekend as the Three Lions return to Lansdowne Road for the first time since February 1995 – when riots started by a hooligan element forced the abandonment of the game inside half an hour.

David Kelly had put Jack Charlton's Boys in Green 1-0 ahead in the 21^st minute and the trouble started when David Platt's equaliser six minutes later was correctly ruled out for offside. Members of a Neo-Nazi group, Combat 18, were located in the Upper West Stand of the stadium and they started throwing missiles and debris onto the pitch and into the lower stands in a premeditated attempt to start a riot.

This forced Dutch referee Dick Jol to call a halt to proceedings and take both sets of players off the pitch, prompting RTÉ's George Hamilton to tell all of those watching at home: “This is a disgrace. It is a scandal. It should never have happened and those people in the West Upper Stand who are throwing the missiles do not deserve to be here or indeed in any football stadium.”

The two teams would not face each other again until meeting in a friendly at Wembley Stadium in May 2013. 80,000 fans peacefully watched the two sides play out a 1-1 draw, with Shane Long putting Ireland ahead before Frank Lampard equalised for Hodgson's men.

The current England boss was in Ballsbridge in 1995 to witness first hand the carnage caused by Combat 18 that night, and he has called on travelling fans to prove that what happened in the past can truly be confined to the past by being on their best behaviour during the clash with Martin O'Neill's side on Sunday.

“I was at the game, it was a particularly bad time for English football and the behaviour of the English fans, and it was a bad time unfortunately for Ireland on the Irish mainland,” Hodgson told the media at the England pre-match press conference. “I'd like to think that in 20 years things have moved on considerably, things are considerably better on both fronts.

“And as far as we are concerned, and I'm sure Martin and his team, and I and my team [all agree], all we're interested in is one thing and one thing alone: playing a good game of football, using this game as the test we need it to be before we move on to important qualifiers a week later.

“The last thing we really want to be doing is talking after the game about incidents, so we can only hope that both sets of fans behave themselves and in particular our fans do not try to provoke the Irish fans by doing things they should not do. They know they shouldn't do them, we're making it clear they shouldn't do them, so let's hope we don't have to talk about that after the game.”

With the football governing body of Sunday's opposition, the FAI, currently in the headlines because of the €5 million sum the association confirmed it received from FIFA in the aftermath of Thierry Henry's handball against France during a World Cup play-off game in 2009 – and not to mention the announcement of Sepp Blatter's intention to resign from his long held FIFA President's role last week – Hodgson had his answer prepared for a question on either issue. In this case, it was FIFA.

“Well you're asking me but you know what I'm going to say,” replied the former Inter Milan, Fulham and Liverpool manager. “I'm not going to get involved in that question. I think it really is a question for the hierarchy in the FA, our executives, and you can't accuse Greg [Dyke, FA chairman] or Martin [Glenn, FA chief executive] of not stepping forward and making their position clear on that subject.

“I think I will, certainly at this moment in time, concentrate on the football, concentrate on the job that I'm actually paid to do which is to coach and manage a group of football players, and I'll leave any real comments which will bear an FA stamp, because I work for the FA – I'll leave it to the people at the FA who are more entitled to make comments at this moment in time.”

However, Hodgson did offer some words of encouragement to the England women's team and his opposite number Mark Sampson ahead of the commencement of their 2015 World Cup campaign in Canada. England will play their first Group F game against France in Moncton on Tuesday and Hodgson believes the Lionesses are as well prepared as they can be for their tilt at reaching the last-four for the first time.

“Obviously we spoke and I've congratulated him [Sampson] a long while ago now on qualifying which was an important step,” said Hodgson. “Now of course all of us wish them the very best of luck in the tournament.

“I think they've gone there extremely well prepared, I think the FA have done everything they can do to make sure that they've got the best possible chance, and I think they'll conduct themselves and acquit themselves very well.

“So they go with our best wishes and we'll be keeping our fingers crossed that they get that little bit of luck you need, so that the ball bounces the right way for you and not against you. We hope they get that luck and if they do they can go a long way, so we wish them well.”