Soccer National League countdown:   Five years after an ill-fated move to St Patrick's Athletic taught him just how wearisome life as a part-time professional in the Eircom League can be, former Limerick defender Pat Purcell is preparing himself this week for a second assault on life in the Premier Division, this time with Waterford United.

Shortlisted for first division player of the year after another impressive season with his home-town club last year, the centre half hopes to make his debut for United against Drogheda United this Friday night. Having previously spent a desperately frustrating year at Inchicore, however, he knows better that to count his chickens.

Playing well for both Fairview Rangers and Gerry Smith's international side a few seasons ago, the young defender attracted interest from a few of the country's bigger clubs but after meeting Pat Dolan he agreed a deal with St Patrick's that even now he still can't quite believe he signed.

He chuckles with embarrassment as he talks about the money he was on and after expressing reluctance to have the figure disclosed he concedes it was "under £100 a week".

The agreement was that the money would be doubled if he made the bench for the first team and trebled if he actually played. Purcell did neither during his time at Richmond Park.

"It was unbelievable really," he laughs as he recalls his days with the Super Saints. "A big part of the problem was that I thought I was doing so well that it never really occurred to me I wouldn't be playing so the figure I was thinking about was the higher one rather than the lowest.

"My work were great about it, they always have been about my football (five years on he still works for the same company, Bax Global, a freight forwarding firm with offices in Limerick and Dublin) but when I moved up I was living with my sister in Newbridge. It meant driving 40 miles to and from work when it had been five minutes away back at home.

"Then we were training Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night. We had Thursday off but had to go to the first-team game even if we weren't involved. I usually played in the under-21 game on Saturday and then we'd be back for an unbelievably tough session on the Sunday.

"On the average Wednesday night you'd arrive completely bollocksed but if you didn't look like you'd just won the lotto then Pat would see it as 'negativity' and it would be a black mark against you. I still can't figure out how it took me the best part of a year to realise that it just couldn't go on."

His opportunity to bail out came midway through his contract when Athlone and Limerick expressed an interest in signing him at the end of his first season. The midlands club offered more money but Purcell, attracted by the idea of playing for his local league club and relieved to have been offered a job back in his company's Limerick office, opted for a move to the Treaty City.

"I was very happy with the move but as soon as you got there you saw the differences between the two set-ups. At St Pat's there had been all sorts of people behind the scenes, coaches, physios, fitness people. It was amazing and I learned a lot from them. At Limerick there was Noel O'Connor doing absolutely everything himself.

"The money was about the same as at St Pat's but after I got paid once the club wasn't able to pay anyone for the next six or eight weeks. Straight away they lost four or five players because they weren't getting paid and it was basically costing them money to play. They couldn't afford to keep that up so they went. I was getting so little that it didn't really make all that much difference to me."

The team staggered through the league season but shocked Cork City, Shamrock Rovers and Derry City on the way to an unlikely League Cup success.

"We were probably the worst team ever to win a trophy bar none but it was great because there was something like £10,000 in prize money and so we all got paid the wages we were owed."

Last season, with Mike Kerley in charge, the board upped the budget a little and the team, despite desperately limited numbers, mounted an astonishing challenge for promotion that ended with defeat by Derry in the play-offs.

"I can't speak highly enough of Mike and the way he managed things but there were still obvious problems. For a couple of games we barely had enough players to put a team out and there wasn't a proper training ground at all.

"There were well-publicised financial problems too but the supporters returned for the closing couple of games of the campaign and once again the players were eventually paid what they were owed."

He waited, he says, to see how the club would fare with its effort to retain a young and increasingly capable group of players but after other key figures departed he too decided he had to move on and took the move to Waterford.

"To be honest," he says of the move, "I'd have loved to stay with them. It would mean a lot to be to be successful with Limerick but I wanted to play Premier Division football too and I felt I had to take that chance."