Setanta Cup: Emmet Malone meets the popular Linfield manager David Jeffrey and hears of his lifelong links to the Northern club

A wet night at Windsor Park and outside the manager's office a small crowd is gathering. Its occupant, David Jeffrey, is late. Not just to meet The Irish Times but also to talk with selected players, his coaching staff on how training has gone and his chief scout.

With the 43-year-old holding down a demanding day job in Larne as a team leader with social services and having just moved apartment nobody is surprised and there are certainly no complaints. The world, after all, is prepared to wait on winners and even before Linfield bagged the first two trophies of this season - if results go their way they could add the fourth league title of his nine-year reign as early as next Saturday at Limavady - Jeffrey had shown himself to be one of those.

When he finally does arrive he is both cheery and charming, doling out apologies and settling quickly down to business. Another hour passes before he gets around to the press but once he does he gives the impression, just as he promised, of a man who would talk until dawn about Linfield, his life and a deeply ingrained love of the game. The three are tightly interlinked. Jeffrey grew up on the wrong side of Belfast to end up a Linfield supporter but travelled from his home near Dundonald to Windsor, often having to hide his club colours from the more numerous Glentoran fans in the area, to watch the club from an early age.

Ironically, after three years at Old Trafford it was a call in strange circumstances from then Glentoran boss Ronnie McFaul that prompted his return home. The club was to play a friendly against Liverpool but the players were threatening to strike because the board had refused their demand for £100 and four match tickets each as payment for playing the game.

Faced with the unrest McFaul was trying to rustle up a replacement team and Jeffrey quickly accepted the offer of a game.

"I was so down over leaving United," he says, "that I remember thinking I'd pack it all in if that game went badly but as it turned out Liverpool played their full team, I was marking Ian Rush and I didn't give him a kick all night. Every time I touched the ball," he adds, "God guided it and it went to a Glentoran player. I had the game of my life."

McFaul tried to persuade him to sign permanently but the next morning Linfield boss Roy Coyle phoned to invite him along to join the squad for a tournament in the Netherlands. "It was a hard call because I had huge respect for Ronnie but I've always been a "Blueman", the whole family was steeped in the club so that's who I decided to sign for."

The fact that he had supported the club from childhood marked him out as a ready-made favourite on the terraces but his performances over the hugely successful 10 years that followed might just have won people over in any case. Amid the string of domestic successes, he enhanced that popularity by scoring the goal at Glenmalure Park that put Shamrock Rovers out of the European Cup in 1984. "I can confess now," he beams, "that there was a Rovers player who'd hit me earlier in the game and as the ball came in from the corner I was aiming to smack it and him but he got out of the way and it ended up in the back of the net."

God too, he feels, had a hand in this incident just as Jeffrey believes he has shaped every aspect of his life to date. He describes his other career, as a senior social worker, currently working with the elderly after lengthy spells with youths and the disabled as "almost a vocational calling," and while widely described as a "born again Christian", the Northerner says he is simply a "Presbyterian with a strong faith". "Part," he adds with a smile, "of an all Ireland church."

To the day-tripping Southerner this combination of firm religious convictions and Linfield Football Club seems a dangerous combination but Jeffrey, whose manner is not at all unlike that of his friend Pat Dolan, is quick to caution against rash conclusions born, he suggests, of prejudice.

"My own beliefs are important to me but like everyone else I have flaws and I certainly wouldn't hold myself up as an example to anyone. I have political opinions too but none of that lends itself to me taking a dislike to somebody simply because they're different."

More controversially, he argues that his club has never been sectarian just misunderstood. He does at one point describe Linfield as a Protestant club but quickly corrects himself and says that he views it as rather unimportant that the club draws the bulk of its support from a particular section of the community.

"The fact is that there has never been a rule at this club that prevented Catholics playing here. Okay, during the Troubles there were times when the reality was that Catholics simply couldn't come here to play but that wasn't to do with the club," he argues, "that was to do with what was going on on the island."

There may those within the game who question his history or the extent of his sincerity but he comes across as being genuine while his actions speak at least as loudly as his words. He repeatedly claims that Linfield is now the most religiously mixed team in the 32 counties. The truth of the matter may be difficult to assess but what is beyond question is that the team that has rampaged its way towards the clean sweep of the North's silverware this season does include several local Catholics.

Jeffrey has also improved the club's image recently with ostensibly small but nevertheless significant gestures such as allowing a banner calling for information on the fate of the long missing Catholic woman Lisa Dorrian (suspected by some to have been murdered by loyalist paramilitaries) to be displayed at games and permitting the camogie team from St Mary's University train under lights at Windsor Park prior to a recent Purcell Cup match.

"People made a lot of the camogie thing but I see it as the most natural thing in the world. Football, sport generally, is meant to bring people together and Linfield is part of that. Sure, there was a core part of our support that has caused problems in the past but we've worked hard to put that right and we won't stop. But let's face it," he concludes, "we're not the only ones who've had problems on that score."

Cliftonville seem the obvious targets of the comment but he looks to turn the assumption on its head. "Look, our supporters would take Cliftonville winning the league ahead of Glentoran any day of the week. Of course, when the two clubs played there would be people who came along to sing and shout abuse at each other, people for whom the football was secondary but believe me it's nothing compared to some of the stuff that goes on when we play Glentoran and that's two clubs who draw their support from the Protestant community. That's why I say you have to be careful about alleging sectarianism. I see it as the sort of rivalry you get in football but taken to an unhealthy degree, something we all have to work to get rid of."

If local animosities still run very deep, last year's Setanta Cup showed the potential that exists for cross-Border competition to thrive while Linfield's thumping of Shelbourne in May's final upset most observers' preconceived notions about the balance of footballing power on the island.

The club, he claims, currently spends £300,000 on player wages - around a third of the corresponding figure at Shelbourne - and the whole squad, including Northern Ireland international Peter Thompson, is part-time. "We want to catch up with our Southern counterparts," he says, "and it (going full-time) is something we're looking at, very positively. But we have to be careful that we get the business plan right because we've seen examples in both leagues of what goes wrong when clubs spend money they don't have."

The Setanta Cup, he feels, is a huge step forward but he dismisses the idea of it developing into an all-Ireland league without ever quite denying or confirming the clear impression that he is against the idea. The leagues, he says, would never surrender their European places while he favours the retention of a separate national team not least, just now, because of the imbalance in their respective strengths.

"None of which means there shouldn't be more co-operation between the clubs, leagues and associations," he says. "At the end of the day, I keep saying (and he does) it is a question of commonality. There is far more to bring us together on this island than to drive us apart." Amen to that.