AT night, he plays football at senior county level, togging out with the Kildare team late into the evening - last year they were narrowly beaten by Galway in the All-Ireland final.

By day, he dons a smart, dark suit, sits at his desk and handles detailed and complex insurance and investment packages. Brian Lacey leads a double life.

The two pursuits "complement each other," he says. "The pressure of playing football has helped me here as well. Playing at that level, I'm more confident. It has helped me when I have to do presentations and generally.

"I enjoy the job. During the day I'm concentrating on figures, dealing with details, sitting at the computer. In the evening, I'm out playing in the fresh air. The two are very different and I like that."

He works in Dublin as group pensions administrator at Coyle Hamilton. The company is an insurance broker, a reinsurance broker, an employee benefits consultant and a risk management consultant all rolled into one. Lacey, sitting at his desk on the second floor of the South Leinster Street building, deals with personnel managers, actuaries, trustees, legal experts, investment managers, financial controllers and individual company employees throughout the day. "You're dealing with professional people from all walks of life," he says.

He is involved in the day-today running of pension and life assurance schemes and disability schemes which have been set up for the employees of various companies. He calculates pension entitlements to members who retire or leave. He attends meetings with trustees on an ongoing basis and with investment managers to review the performance of invested money.

"We go out to companies and do presentations on schemes. We have to show them the benefits of the scheme.

"I'm dealing with a number of companies, mainly with personnel departments. It makes it easier. Most of the work is done through paperwork, but there would be an element of phone work as well.

"We provide the advice. We're the brokers. You do calculations. You get to go and attend meetings. It's a wide area."

Lacey did accountancy and business organisation at school. "I applied for courses like commerce and business." Then, in 1992, an area which had been an option at UL was introduced as a full-time degree course. Although insurance and European studies was not his first choice, Lacey says "it's unique in Ireland. I wanted to do commerce and I had an interest in accountancy and business organisation. They were the two subjects I enjoyed. At school I never took an interest in the science subjects."

His father owns a hotel at home in Tipperary town. "I was always working there, in the bar and in reception, in the nightclub, doing everything. It was through my father that my interest came about. He's an entrepreneur himself."

Besides, he liked maths, which is a help. However, he points out that he did not do honours maths at school - "I got an A in pass maths."

The four-year degree involved two six-month work placements. He went to France, to a company near Nantes, and then worked in Manchester for a further six months. In general, the course, he says, was a nice mixture of subjects. "It wasn't all business."