It's Kilkenny City's first training session of the week and if anything can be read into it, then the club's latest assault on the Harp Lager FAI Cup would seem destined to go much the same way as they all have in recent times. The statistics - two cup matches won in six years - appear to confirm the bookies' view that Alfie Hale and his men rank amongst the competition's outsiders.

This year, a string of injuries and the unavailability of the club's most recent two signings have dented City's chances of progressing to the second round. Of the 14 players who have turned out to train on a poorly-lit, water-logged pitch, almost half have no real chance of playing against UCD this Saturday night.

Still, Alfie Hale is upbeat about the situation. A year ago his team were heading for promotion and he was wary that the cup might prove to be a damaging distraction. Now? Well, right now it's safe to say that Hale will take his distractions wherever he can get them.

With his side's chances of avoiding the drop declining by the week, there will be less pressure on players and a victory would represent a terrific boost to confidence.

"Given that our one win this season was against them and we managed a draw with them here when we played very poorly, we feel that should be within our capabilities," says Hale.

And yet the Cup has generally proven to be a source of frustration for the 58-year-old from Waterford. During a celebrated playing career, Hale won just about everything going on the domestic front. Six league titles, a league cup and 14 international caps. Despite spells at Aston Villa, Doncaster and Newport, he is still the league's fifth-highest goal-scorer of all time. But, just as it has during his managerial career, the FAI Cup always eluded him.

Three times he reached the final with Waterford only to end up on the losing side and when he led the club there in 1986, his team had the misfortune to meet a Shamrock Rovers side that was a cut above any of its rivals at the time.

"This time, though, the problems that we have in the league are so great that I haven't even had a chance to think about putting a run together. It couldn't have happened at a better time for us and we'd love to win, but if we don't, then stuff it, it will have given the players a breather and it'll be out of the way."

If City can dig themselves out of trouble and climb above the students in the league, then the result of this encounter will be of very much secondary importance. But if, on the other hand, City are relegated, then Hale fears Kilkenny might slip into the sort of promotion-and-relegation cycle that the likes of Galway, Drogheda and Athlone have found themselves in before.

He is highly critical of the current situation in the league, the status of players - which he feels is neither one thing or the other - and, particularly, the quality of the game's administrators.

"It's not the turnover of managers or players that ever causes the game problems. It's the turnover of directors. When Waterford were winning six cups in eight years, everybody wanted to be a director, but when the good times dried up, they were the first ones to go and that sort of attitude is still a problem at a lot of clubs.

"You get people who put a few thousand pounds in and think they're Elton John, but then owning a club doesn't turn out the way they thought it would, so they get out again and the club is badly affected. By and large if you look at it, it's the club which has been stable at boardroom level which has been stable in other ways as well."

He is a great admirer of what some Dublin clubs have achieved in recent years and echoes many of their sentiments, although his broad support, with some qualifications, for the Dublin Dons proposal might not exactly endear him to them.

And his support for the idea of pruning the league back to 14 or 16 teams might surprise those who feel that Kilkenny might be hard pushed to earn a place in such a set up. For Hale, though, it just seems like common sense. "As long as it's done fairly over a couple of years, then I don't think anybody could complain."

Just now, though, the priorities are more immediate. A manager who sees his first duty to be the development of players needs those he is working with now to start turning the corner this weekend.

Finn Harps have completed the signing of Shelbourne's Pascal Vaudequin for an undisclosed fee. The 30 year-old Frenchman joins a number of other former Derry City players, including Jonathan Speak and Declan Boyle, at Finn Park. The Donegal club's manager, Charlie McGeever, said last week that targeting Vaudequin was part of the club's policy of concentrating on players from the north west.