National League's countdown to the new season: Emmet Malone talks to the ever-enthusiastic Tony Mannion, in his third spell as Galway boss.

For journalists with a deadline to consider people like Tony Mannion should come with a warning attached. Always in a hurry but never so pressed that he can't talk a while, the Galway United manager's boundless enthusiasm remains undiminished ahead of another new campaign at Terryland Park.

Time is running out before Friday night's opening game, at home to Kilkenny City, but even the call to set up the interview lasts close to half an hour.

"Tony," he says as he answers the phone at home before training. You crack some joke about him answering the phone himself and he explains it's part of the job. "Nobody else answers it here," he laughs, "not even when they're three feet away. They just leave it ring and say they knew it was for me anyway."

Things were bad enough when at least some portion of Mannion's workload revolved around a "day job" but a few years back he retired from Eircom and became project manager with local club Salthill Devon. Now, in his third spell as United manager the tug of war for his time is between football and football. There is, of course, only ever going to be one winner.

"The Salthill job is very exciting," he says. "We've spent €6 million developing 20 acres of land and we have another 18 to work with," he says. "There's always something going on and at the moment we're working on the clubhouse which is to be finished by May.

"At the same time, running a league team is probably more demanding these days than it ever was before and though the clubs have very strong links you're answering to people who have very different priorities at different points of the day. The Salthill people will be chasing you wanting to know what's happening with the development while the United people want to know whether some pre-season friendly or other has been lined up yet."

He describes himself as "the man on the ground, the runner," in a set-up staffed behind the scenes by a small army of volunteers and repeatedly, he comes back to talking about how dramatically the club's structures have improved over the years. Just about everything else, he observes, is better too.

While Salthill's facilities are better than those of many fairly prominent clubs in Britain, Mannion hasn't forgotten what it was like taking his United players training during some of the more chaotic spells in the club's history.

"Even during what were good times for us on the pitch we would end up looking for pitches on the side of a main road so we could train under street-lights," he recalls. "If anything, things were going backwards for a long time. There used to be more pitches but we've lost a lot of them to the builders. When Digital came in they put in a pitch beside the factory. It had floodlighting and everything and we used to train there sometimes, which was great. But then they expanded and a road went through and the pitch was lost. It has happened all over the place, which is exactly the reason what we're doing at Salthill is so important."

The club, he says, has more than 700 members now with teams catering for every level of player. "We've got money from the FAI and the Government, as well as what the people here have raised themselves and you couldn't start to justify that on the basis of the senior teams. There has to be a recreational aspect to it and we have to make a real contribution to the local community. Every club, every sport has a part to play and that's why I find some of the squabbling that goes on so frustrating. We have a terrific relationship down here with the Connacht branch of the IRFU, they know the enemy isn't the other associations, it's alcohol or drugs. That's the business we're really in."

The more players that can be kept in the game, however, the better the chances some will find their way into the United set-up. The club has brought a succession of local youngsters through in recent seasons and Mannion sees the link with Salthill as central to the club's hopes of future success.

"Even when we would have been considered far more successful at a national level it was impossible to attract players down here. That's why we have to develop them ourselves and that's what we're doing from an early age now, not just snapping up the players other clubs have spent years coaching. That sort of thing generates endless bad feeling and doesn't do anybody any good in the long term."

Despite taking United's first-team squad for training five times a week, he also takes in youth games and practice sessions so he can keep tabs on how the next generation is progressing.

He laughs, however, at the suggestion his commitment is anything beyond the norm.

"It's something you get used to," he observes. "I mean you wouldn't do it unless you had a passion for it but after a while you take it all for granted. There's all sorts of little things, like the fact you'll phone people at hours you wouldn't dream of calling somebody who isn't involved in the game. Another manager will be at training and then some meeting so you'll ring him at all hours because that's the way it's done.

"There are lots of little things like that and you certainly wouldn't do it for the money but you have to remember at this level there is some recognition for what you put in. How many people run schoolboy clubs for nothing at all, how many wives wash sets of jerseys week in week out and barely get a thank you? Those are the people we have to look after because as a league manager you're pretty much at the top of the food chain.

It's the people at what are considered the lower levels that make what we do possible."