It's early days yet, but if his first two years have been anything to go by, Dave Barry the manager may even manage to eclipse the achievements of Dave Barry the player in the years ahead.It'll be a tall order, of course. The 36-year-old's many outstanding performances both for his county's Gaelic football team and for Cork City won't be forgotten in a hurry. But so far he hasn't put a foot wrong since moving into management, and Sunday's Harp Lager FAI Cup final could be the occasion on which he scores the first major success of this, the second phase of his career.Not bad going for a man who has only been running the show at City for a little over two years. Barry, in fact, took over the reigns at the club with just seven league matches remaining of the 1995/96 season and promptly cut his managerial teeth by steering the team to safety after a season in which relegation had been a fairly constant threat."Avoiding the drop was the priority of that year," he says, "and last year I thought we did well to make it into the Inter-Toto Cup. Now, 12 months on again, we're going into a cup final having already qualified for the UEFA Cup. It's a fair indication of the progress we've made."The directors at the club, he admits, have been central to the recovery. Not once during his time in charge has one of his requests been turned down, while the improved sense of stability that followed the conclusion of the Bishopstown saga and the return to Turners' Cross has been a considerable boost to morale on the playing side, even if the long term prospects for the development of the club have, once again, taken a knock."It's terrible to say that, for all the good times that we had down here, we haven't go much to show for it. We've played teams in Europe over the last few years who had better training facilities than anything over here, while down here we don't have anything of our own. We use UCC for reserve games and rent Turners' Cross."A deal with the FAI over the availability for Bishopstown for training and reserve games is being discussed, however, and the guarantee of European football next season will, he hopes, help to build confidence amongst the club's backers.On the playing front, much progress has been made. But City have remained a step or two behind the big Dublin outfits and, regardless of Sunday's outcome, Barry realises that he needs to expand the club's panel if a serious assault is to be made on the longer term target, the championship."I was very excited when I looked at the squad we had before the start of this season, and everything seemed to be going well early on when we won our first few games. Then we got injuries to Dave Hill and Mark Herrick, while Patsy Freyne was still out, and we started to find it harder to win matches."The team never dropped far off the pace, but midfield injuries were followed by a loss of form by the club's main goalscoring hope, Jason Kabia, and league victories continued to prove elusive.More recently, however, the arrival of Johnny Glynn and Kabia's improvement have solved particular difficulty, while Freyne, Hill and the ever improving Kelvin Flanagan have settled into a battle for the places in the middle of the field.Herrick, he says, has made "tremendous progress" in recent weeks, but won't be quite ready to play this weekend. Elsewhere, though, Barry has more competition for places than he dared hope for a couple of months ago, even if he does still have to juggle things about to compensate for the loss of Colin O'Brien."Colin's a terrible loss and I feel very sorry for him because he's going to be out for 10 months, and that means I might have to bring somebody in for him for the start of next season. All in all we're in fairly good shape, though, and everybody's looking forward to Sunday's game."The weight of expectation, he admits, is considerable, but then that's nothing new. Every day of his long sporting career the people of Cork have expected great things from Dave Barry. And up to now they haven't been let down too often.