The interview is heading for its 10th minute now and the chief executive of St Patrick's Athletic is doing what he does best - talking about his passion for his team, his club, his game. He hasn't been asked a question yet, of course.

There were greetings, the offer of a coffee and that was it, he was off. Not for the first time Pat Dolan has caught me a little off guard and he is already at an advanced stage of attempting to identify St Patrick's Athletic's place in the future of European football by the time the tape recorder is switched on.

As ever, his devotion to the topic being discussed, the topic he is discussing, is obvious. More than once he contradicts himself, but then there are, he points out, a multitude of contradictions in football today and he is just one man at one club attempting to identify a way forward across some murky seas.

Europe, it seems, is the current topic of his dreams. Over the course of the couple of hours we sit in his office he repeatedly returns to the subject of the club's defeat at the start of this season by Celtic, the future structure of the Continent's club competitions and the importance to the game here that Irish clubs, particularly his own, ensure they have a part to play in whatever the new order turns out to be.

The reason for this fascination is rooted in the fact that Dolan, along with the rest of the growing band of believers who run St Patrick's Athletic, is in the process of drawing up the club's next five-year plan.

The last one set out the targets as being a dramatic improvement of the facilities at Richmond Park, the establishment of a full-time playing set-up and the winning of the league, all of which were achieved. Next time he intends that the club he now controls will be a little more ambitious.

First on the list of things to be achieved by 2004 is another substantial improvement in the club's playing facilities. This may be a barely recognisable Richmond Park, a stadium across the road where St Michael's estate now stands, or a new ground in another part of west Dublin. He's not yet sure, but he's determined that things will be a lot better by then.

There is also the issue of a training centre which, he says, goes hand in hand with the stadium. And then there is the achievement of some form of European success. Not winning a trophy, you understand, but the sort of moderate achievement that would mark out his club, and by extension, he believes, other Irish clubs, as worthy competitors on the international stage.

As ever, though, there are the cynics to be dealt with and, having started to talk about his plans for the future, the 30-year-old Galwayman, who grew up in London, takes one of his regular conversational diversions.

"Yeah, sure, there are people who say that none of this stuff can ever happen," he says. "Guys like Dunphy and Giles, who talked the talk but never walked the walk. They left everybody sceptical because of their failure and, not only that, but when they got out they did tremendous damage to the industry here by saying, `Well, we've had a go and we can't make it work so nobody can make it work'.

"They've had a tremendous platform in this country and they are very powerful people in terms of the game here, but they have chosen to be very negative about anything that anybody coming behind them is attempting to do and that is terribly frustrating for any of us who are trying to improve things now."

The country's two most prominent pundits aren't the only people in the media here who Dolan believes identify too readily with the English game. Much of the coverage that the National League receives now, he reckons, is produced under duress.

"The fact is that the media here are very, very anti-Irish football," he observes with, it has to be said, a good deal more sincerity than the league's officials can generally muster when thanking journalists for their efforts at the occasional official functions that bring the two groups together over the course of a season.

"If we're honest here, if you said to the majority of the media, with the exception of a few individuals, `Listen, Irish football is dead. We don't have to cover it anymore and we don't have to go to these grounds anymore. What we do now is that, if you're a soccer correspondent in Ireland, you fly over to Highbury or Stamford Bridge or the San Siro, that's your job now', people would go, `Oh great, yeah, super'."

This is clearly something that troubles Dolan. But then the media are not the only people, he believes, who have thus far failed to see the light. More worryingly there is the FAI who, while there have been sections of the press who have characterised him as a bit of a figure of fun over the last few years, must rue the day the former Arsenal and Walsall player ever came home to Ireland.

Aside from his relentless belief in the potential of the game here, it is probably Dolan's equally powerfully expressed disappointment with the quality of the game's administration at national level that has won him the most notoriety.

The structure of the league, the FAI's dealings with RTE, the way the clubs are treated and what he perceives as a complete failure to market the product they are responsible for, are his most commonly voiced difficulties with the powers that be in Merrion Square. He recalls the sense of disbelief he experienced at one of the functions leading up to last summer's Carlsberg tournament at Lansdowne Road.

"We were there when the president of the FAI happened to mention that, `Well, of course, I'm biased towards one of these teams'. It wasn't the Irish team, though. Oh no, he was talking about being a Liverpool fan, and the terrible thing was that nobody even thought that somebody like him coming out and saying that was strange."

By now, one would have suspected that Dolan would have stopped being surprised by the FAI, for he has consistently identified the weakness of the central body as being a key factor in holding back the game here at all levels.

"This week," he says, "has been a good week for the game, because the association have not only revealed their plans to construct a national stadium on the outskirts of Dublin, but it has also appointed a new marketing manager for the league.

"I take my hat off to them, particularly for the stadium because not only are they finally doing it, but they are doing it right and that is important." he says.

Still, though, wounds remain from his various skirmishes over the past few years with Merrion Square.

The Celtic game, it is apparent, is a particularly raw nerve. The relationship between St Patrick's Athletic and their north Dublin rivals Shelbourne went steadily downhill over the course of last season, and at the heart of that decline were the growing personal differences between Dolan and the man who is effectively his opposite number at Tolka Park, Ollie Byrne.

When St Patrick's drew Celtic in the first qualifying round of the Champions' League at the start of this season and Shelbourne drew Rangers in the UEFA Cup, Byrne was annoyed at the attitude taken by the FAI towards his club's home game, which the association made clear they did not want played in Dublin, and, particularly, their far warmer attitude to the pairing of St Patrick's and Celtic.

When the champions had to move their home game to Tolka Park because of the lack of an adequate number of seats at Richmond, the two men came face to face and, predictably, it didn't go well.

"I'll never forget what went on in the build-up to that game and the way that the FAI attempted to handle it. We had to put up with all sorts of things, the game was off at one stage and we couldn't handle the ticketing the way we wanted to because of another problem and what did the FAI start to do? They started to arbitrate.

"You don't sit Adolf Hitler down with Winston Churchill and ask them to compromise. You can't because you just have to side with good. If things had gone better in the build-up to that game, I honestly believe we would have beaten Celtic."

The rash analogy Dolan employs to describe the dispute with his rival is in no small part born out of the frustration he still feels about the fact that his side came so close to toppling the Scottish giants.

Building a team, and even winning the league, is child's play, he says in so many words. A major European scalp at what he still views as being a very early stage of the club's current phase of development would have been an enormous boost to what he is trying to achieve.

It appears that not even he is sure what that is exactly. Several targets are mentioned in terms of achievement on the pitch. Becoming the first team for more than a decade to retain the league title, winning the cup for the first time since 1961 and making an impression at European level and it is this last one that clearly intrigues the most just now.

"Nobody knows where Ireland is going to fit in a new European set-up and obviously that concerns us. As long as there is a pyramid system and we can play our way into the main competitions or some other form of door is open to us, we'll be happy.

"If Manchester United don't have any idea about how many European games they are going to have to play in five years or what form the competitions are going to take, and they don't, then what chance have we got of knowing? But people are always saying that there might well be a Dublin side playing in a new European set-up, but it's not going to be St Patrick's Athletic and I'll tell you one thing, we don't accept that for a minute."

Dolan accepts that there are problems to be overcome, our poor record in club competitions for a start. "Yeah, people moan about why we have to play three rounds to qualify for the Champions' League and I'd be the first to point out that UEFA haven't singled us out, they haven't turned the spotlight on this country and said: `Hey, Ireland we don't like you.'

"The fact is that we have performed badly and what we have to go through now is the same as all the other countries who have a poor co-efficient have to endure.

"What we are saying, though, is that there's no reason why that always has to be the case. If we have to improve on the field we'll do that, we already are doing that and if they say that we have to have a 60,000 all-seater stadium, then, fine, we'll get it. I don't know how but if we're given the time we'll find a way."

Crucially, he feels, the first thing that has to be shaken off is the inferiority feeling which pervades the game here. As an administrator, he says, he comes up against the problem all the time and, as a manager, it represents another of the dreaded memories of the European outing.

"I had mixed feelings that night in Parkhead, because, on the one hand we achieved a great result, but on the other we should have won the game and from that point of view I failed as a manager.

"But then you find yourself afterwards trying to stop players standing there and taking pictures of the place. You're standing there and you're saying, `Now hold on, okay, respect them for what they've achieved but don't be in awe of it, because this is the sort of thing that we have to aspire to. This is what we have to go home and build St Patrick's Athletic up into over the next few years'."

And that, he believes, is what he and the people around him at the club can do. "People may laugh," he repeats at regular intervals, "but then some people would have laughed at the suggestion that the FAI were going to build the sort of stadium that they're talking about now.

"What we need to do now is persuade them that, when they've sorted out the facilities for the national team, they have to take the next step on, which is sort out the facilities for the next highest level here, the National League. If we can persuade them and we can persuade the Government and the people around us that what we are attempting to do is a good thing, is something that will be of benefit to everybody, then why can't we succeed?

"I'm no Jack Walker. I can't just write a cheque for it all so I have to find other ways of doing it. But one thing is for sure, if the group of people that are at this club now can't do it over the next five years, then we'll be the first to hold up our hands and say, "Well, we weren't up to it, it's going to take somebody better than us'. But even then I'll know that it can be done."

When the new five-year plan has finished, whether he has succeeded in implementing it or not, he insists that he will return to coaching or team management.

He is candid about his disappointment regarding his playing career: a promising start at Arsenal followed by a frustrating spell at Walsall and then a move back to Ireland, (he left with his family when he was just 18 months old), where he played for Galway United, Shamrock Rovers and St Patrick's but where he never came close to fulfilling the potential he had shown as an under-18 and under-21 international.

Even at Arsenal, though, he says that his natural ability on the coaching side was spotted and it is that side of the game that he hopes to concentrate on from the time that he is 35 onwards.

He is certainly proud, and justifiably so, of his remarkable record as the St Patrick's manager. In just 20 months in the job he inherited from Brian Kerr he won the league and assembled a squad which is the envy of just about every other club in the country.

It wasn't all smooth going and he is frank about the fact that there was considerable unease within the club at the prospect of him taking over. Not least when he took his first training session with the squad.

"The first problem was that there wasn't a tracksuit around the place that would fit me. Obviously, that was my fault because I was so out of condition. I would say that part of that problem was maybe caused by the fact that I put the club in front of myself a lot of the time and so my lifestyle wasn't what it might have been."

In fact, the hours he was putting in at the club were already long and they became legendary during his stint as both manager and chief executive.

"So, I suppose, by the time I took over from Brian people thought I would be a joke because, I suppose, I did look like a joke but I knew I could do the job and I knew that if I had the chance to I could prove that to people."

That he did, although even now he feels he and his team didn't get the credit that they deserved. Sure they won the league but, he complains, "there was always this thing in the media that what really happened was that Shelbourne lost it."

Still, afterwards Dolan surprised everybody again by stepping aside to make way for Liam Buckley, a longstanding friend from their days at Rovers, who he praises with a warmth exceeded only when he talks about club chairman Tim O'Flaherty.

It was a difficult decision to make, he admits, but the right one given that he was assuming overall control of the club at the time. But already he is missing it. Now, however, he is intent on squeezing as much into what he says will be his last five years as an administrator after which there will be plenty of time to prove his worth as a coach.

He doesn't rule out a move to another club at some stage, he would love to be involved with Galway United he insists, but is happy for the moment to contemplate his future with St Patrick's and, most importantly, in the game.

"Of course I'd like to think that I've been good for the game here, but what's definitely true is that Irish football's been very good to me."

He is at pains to emphasise the social importance of the sport, particularly in areas such as Inchicore where there are problems with poverty, social deprivation and drugs.

"You don't have those sort of problems in a parish where the GAA is the main sport but in areas like this soccer can change lives because the kids want to play it. Their heroes are mostly English footballers, but in Inchicore the St Patrick's footballers are heroes too and that's important.

"The other reason I'm involved in football is because of games like Saturday's. When I was saying a few years ago that days like this would happen a lot of people doubted it but now you have people in Cork saying that this team is the most important thing in the city right now in a sporting sense. Isn't that wonderful?"

By this point in the conversation Buckley has been in and out of the room for the best part of half an hour and has been attempting, valiantly, to get his colleague to depart with him to a meeting for which they are both now late.

Dolan, though, is determined to tie up some loose ends from the conversation.

Everybody is edging towards the door and he's still talking, about how the club changed while Buckley was at Athlone. He could keep going all day it seems and the conversation, one suspects, could go anywhere.

Well almost anywhere. "Don't get me started", is the one phrase you really don't expect to hear.