COLUMN: Emmet Malone on the National League

It's been a different sort of year for UCD player/manager Paul Doolin, trying to avoid being in the thick of things come the end of the season. Having won five doubles and two cups during his playing career, mid-table obscurity isn't a target he's used to setting. Despite this, though, his side's position in the league has a pretty good look about it right now.

His team, he insists, is still not safe and won't be until it is mathematically impossible for it to get sucked back down but some decent results over the past month - not least Sunday's 1-0 win over Shamrock Rovers - have gone a long way towards ensuring they avoid the drop. Last week's win over Galway meant they had two more points than at the end of last season and the new manager is almost getting to the stage where he can cast an eye on July and a fresh start.

Doolin's job, he feels, was simply to keep them in the Premier league in a season when they might have been sucked down. "Last year we finished 10th and survived but that won't be good enough this year so the simple fact was that we had to improve and I think we've done that over the past few months."

No one at the club seems to be in too much doubt as to why. Players and officials at Belfield are agreed about the impact the former Bohemians, Shelbourne and Derry City midfielder has had since arriving last summer. Doolin, however, was something of a surprise choice for the UCD coaching job. But, having made the shortlist, Martin Moran met him and took "two minutes" to decide he was looking at the man he wanted.

"I asked around," Moran recalls, "just looking for ideas and people kept saying Paul was somebody they'd learned a lot from. You only have to look at his record. I mean he played in Europe 15 seasons in a row. Once you meet him you understand what they're talking about because it's clear straightaway the sort of person he is and he knows the game inside out."

Club secretary Brendan Dillon admits to having been a little sceptical on hearing the recommendation. Doolin had no coaching experience.

"That's probably why we got him, though," says Dillon now, "and there's no question about how much he has achieved here. After the Doc (Dr Tony O'Neill) died Martin gave us great stability, I don't think we'd have been able as a club to bring in somebody from outside like Paul at that stage. But two years on Paul has brought a new focus and new demands for all of the players because of how demanding and focused he is himself."

The result, says Dillon, has been "performances that, with the exceptions of the two games at Bohemians, have been up to 50 per cent better than last year's. As a player he has been terrific but what has been even more important is what he gets other people around him to do."

One of the side's more experienced figures, Tony McDonnell, readily agrees. "I've played midfield a bit myself and it's hard work but what he does there is astonishing, the way he anticipates everything seems to enable him to be in the right place at the right time all the time."

McDonnell says the changes to training, Doolin's insistence on treating it almost as seriously as the games themselves, has had a considerable impact on the players too. "There isn't anything all that different about it but there is a greater sense of professionalism about it."

All point to the influence of Noel White and Theo Dunne as being positive factors too and Dillon insists it is very much a three-man management team, all the more so since Doolin spends most of his time attempting to run things from midfield.

Doolin had said he would give up playing last season and has been saying much the same thing again of late. He concedes, though, he has done better on the pitch this year than he expected and his determination to hang up his boots is softening once more.

"Against the better sides I definitely find it difficult and I don't want to get to the stage where I'm really struggling. But I'll probably register next season and maybe aim to play a bit less."

Having recently signed a contract extension that will keep him at Belfield until the autumn of 2003, however, it does actually seem safe to assume now that the Dubliner, who turns 39 this month, will end his playing days in a UCD shirt.

"I've been lucky," he says. "I could have gone into management a couple of years ago with Dundalk but if I'd done that then I would have missed the double with Shelbourne. There were times after that when you think that maybe the chance won't come along again but then it did here with UCD. And then this year some of the younger lads, David Quinn, Alan McNally, Robbie Martin and Darragh Ryan, have all come on more than we probably would have expected.

"I never been one for judging a manager on the strength of one year, though, and I'm not going to get carried away on the basis of what I've done so far either. When we're definitely safe then I'll have achieved something as a manager."

After that, he says, he can start edging the bar up. It may be some time, however, before it reaches the sort of heights he has grown accustomed to down the years.