Sitting back at the same table where Brian Kerr signed him for Saint Patrick's Athletic some 18 months ago, it almost seems as if Packie Lynch hasn't got a care in the world. Successful in his full-time job, in a commercial bank just up the road from the Harcourt Street bar where we meet one busy lunchtime, and with a football career that has gone from strength to strength of late, things are looking good for the 24-yearold, who has emerged as one of the outstanding players of the current campaign.

To be fair, the future had always looked bright for Lynch who, seven years ago, arrived at UCD from Sallynoggin's Saint Joseph's Boys and went straight into the the club's National League team in place of the recently departed Tony McCarthy.

He served his time at Belfield both on and off the pitch, emerging in 1996 with a good degree, a Masters in Business Studies, and an even better footballing reputation.

Many's the manager who would have queued overnight to secure such a walking combination of youth, experience and talent. Kerr, not for nothing feted as the best manager in the land these days, skipped past his rivals and persuaded the defender to join the recently-crowned league champions.

There were other offers, including those from the financial world which would have meant working in some more exotic parts. But Kerr proved persuasive; £16,000 of the cash taken in during the title-winning campaign went to UCD and Lynch opted to stay in Dublin with ACC.

"I wouldn't have been happy not playing football, and the chance to play with Brian Kerr, whether it had been at Pat's or Shamrock Rovers or wherever, was a factor," he says.

Kerr or no Kerr, not everything went exactly to plan in the months after the deal was done. Lynch, who had suffered from glandular fever during his last season at Belfield, made a somewhat rocky transition to Sainthood. Suffering, perhaps, from a bit of a title hangover, the team was playing poorly, and the new arrival was no exception.

"The first game in the league was at Dundalk, and my girlfriend was back up in Sligo with her gran on the night of the game. She shouted in to put on the television to see the half-time score, and her gran shouts back that Dundalk are winning, `And look, they have a P Lynch too, a P Lynch og,"' he recalls with a laugh. "I didn't actually play badly, but the next day in the papers the only scorer was listed as P Lynch, o.g."

Between injuries before that Christmas, the team's poor home form overall and a brief switch to full-back, it took a while for things to improve. But by the time Kerr departed to take charge of the Irish youths, Pat Devlin had drafted Lynch into the National League team, and he reckoned he had done enough to secure place in the first team line-up.

Then, in the close season, Pat Dolan went to work. Lynch, and the man he expected to start the season alongside in the centre of defence, Mick Moody, were joined by Stephen McGuinness. There was talk of Brendan Place being signed and Colin Hawkins, another of the Malaysian World Cup stars, opted to move from England to Inchicore. Lynch was the previous manager's man and, as Eamon Dunphy once observed, it just isn't funny when your club signs somebody who plays your position. Lynch, sure enough, suddenly found himself with little enough to be cheerful about.

Despite an injury scare, however, Lynch has thus far emerged as one of the winners from a tight, four-way contest for action. Dr Pat O'Neill recommended surgery on a degenerative cartilage, but, fearing a long lay-off, the former UCD skipper decided to take his chances. He came in against his old club in the last of three League Cup matches for what he describes as "a last throw of the dice" and has played every minute of the 16 matches since.

During that time, Saint Patrick's have conceded fewer goals than any other side, and over the last eight weeks he and Hawkins have done much to ensure that Trevor Wood has been beaten just once - by Liam Coyle's outstanding, long-range strike in Derry.

"As it is, it's hard to tell exactly how much of that is down to you," Lynch says of the team's run. "At a club like Pat's, you're a smaller fish in a bigger pool than at UCD where, and I never agreed with it, all of the praise tended to be heaped on a few players by the media and the people who were watching us."

Hawkins, he has little doubt, has certainly played his part, and their partnership - "Sometimes you just play alongside somebody and you know straight away that you complement each other" - has, to date, looked to be one of the outstanding features of the side.

The presence of seven full-time players, former Joseph's teammates Keith Long and Willie Burke and a tough, but challenging regime have also, he feels, helped him to produce his best for a team that has been beaten just once this season.

"We tinkered with a formation we hadn't played before that night," he says of that 3-2 defeat by Shelbourne back in September, "and to be honest it didn't work. We didn't do ourselves justice that night and, in a way, we don't really feel that we've played them yet."

The prospect of the team slipping up again brings pressure, and Lynch admits to feeling a little on edge ahead of one of the biggest games of his career. "Still," he says, "that's why they bought me, because they thought I was good enough to play in games like this, and that's why I signed for them, to be out there marking the best centre forward in the country in a game that's live on television with everybody waiting for me to make a mistake."

If his form of late is to be taken as any sort of indicator, they may be disappointed.