LEAGUE OF IRELAND MANAGERIAL MOVES:PETE MAHON'S five-year reign at UCD ended abruptly yesterday when a difference of opinion with the club's board over how the club might most speedily be restored to the top-flight prompted his departure. Both parties expressed regret it had come to a parting of the ways but neither seems to have been capable of finding an alternative way forward.
"I'm sad to be going because I've enjoyed my time at the club and I don't really know what's in store for me next," he said, "but I've never applied for a job in football before and I don't really anticipate starting now. I'll see what comes my way, although I'm aware there are a lot of good young managers out of work at the moment."
Indeed, Mahon got to know one or two of them a while back when completing his Uefa Pro Licence course and, he reflected yesterday, obtaining the qualification has not done much for many of the group.
"The likes of Alan Mathews, John Gill, Johnny McDonnell, Tony Cousins, Brian Kerr and Damien Richardson were all there. It seems to have been the kiss of death," he concluded ruefully.
Mahon leaves Belfield with the first team having recently been relegated to the First Division but, with key players lost during the campaign and other clubs spending heavily to avoid the drop, few believed the former St Francis and Bohemians boss had been to blame for the club's failure to maintain its top-flight status.
"Pete has made an enormous contribution to the development and stability of this club over the last five years or so," said club secretary Richard Shakespeare. "We are very sorry he will no longer be with us. We . . . will continue to have an excellent relationship with him."
Meanwhile, his predecessor at UCD, Paul Doolin, has confirmed that he has had talks with Cork City owner Tom Coughlan with regard to the possibility of succeeding Alan Mathews at the club. The Dubliner was in Cork last night and is due to have further talks.
He is just the latest in a long line of managers to be approached over the vacancy and Coughlan is increasingly anxious to fill the post as the first-team squad returns to training this Friday.
Doolin will be encouraged by Colin Healy's decision to sign a two-year deal yesterday, but there are still only nine players currently under contract for next season and prominent squad members like Michael Devine and Mark McNulty have so far turned down what they have been offered.
"There's no doubt, though," he said last night, "that it's a big club with great potential and we'll see how things go over the next few days."
The difficulties continue at Cobh with the supporters' group Friends of Cobh Ramblers threatening to seek a High Court injunction to prevent the club's board
proceeding with a plan, approved at an egm on Sunday, to offer St Colman's Park to the FAI for €500,000 to pay off debts.
A spokesman for the FAI insisted yesterday that the board's sale and lease-back proposal has yet to be formally put to the association and that only when it is can it be considered.
There is a widespread belief, though, that the club has been given assurances that the scheme will receive the green light in Abbotstown if it gets that far and Ramblers' chairman Barry Walsh sounded confident about the outcome in the wake of Sunday's meeting, the third egm convened to consider the matter.
