Breaking away from UCD has helped

WHEN James Keddy told everyone at UCD that he was about to move on at the end of last season there was, he said, just one thing that was tempting him away his hunger for success.

Belfield Park hadn't seen much of it over the past decade and in the rough and tumble of the National League the club management's leaning towards young players on scholarships didn't seem like the ideal route to bringing it back as far as he could see.

The 24 year old had missed much of last season with a broken right ankle (he now has a plate and eight screws in it) and having had less opportunity than most to display his talents to potential employers there didn't seem to be an overwhelming demand for his signature from the bigger clubs. But Felix Healy got in touch and, in these parts, they don't come much bigger than Derry City.

Heading for 12 months later and Keddy's instincts have been fully justified. Had he stayed with the Dubliners, he observes now, my season would have been over now. I would have been playing out a few pretty meaningless matches and wondering about next year again. Instead, I'm playing with a team that has a chance of doing the double".

For Healy, obtaining Keddy's signature last summer represented a major step towards the completion of his plan for achieving success. Derry had lacked a naturally left sided midfielder since Paul Kinnaird's return to Scotland and, although young Tom Mohan had coped well with the role when asked to fill it, Healy saw in Keddy an answer to his problems.

He feels that Keddy has already justified his signing but has the ability to do a lot more.

"With no disrespect to UCD, it's been a hard year for James because he has come from a club where there is not so much pressure on players to the Brandywell and he coped very well. In ways, though, he is still adapting to the change and I think he'll be a far better player next season.

"The problem is probably that James sees a lot less of the ball here than he did at UCD and I think that he's found that a little bit frustrating. He's probably not quite the star that he was there, he's surrounded by a lot of other good players but he's growing into it, he's still learning and he will be a very fine player."

Keddy and two of his fellow Dublin based City players train in the capital. Other National League teams do not make their facilities available due to Derry's exploitation of the Bosman ruling.

"It isn't too bad, because we train in Sandymount with YMCA whose coach is very good. We do a lot of work with the ball there and the training is quite hard, so I haven't had any trouble," he says.