National League/Emmet Malone: As Paul Doolin reflects on the support his UCD side receive at Belfield these days he feels it isn't the smaller numbers that mark the place out as different from their bigger Dublin neighbours but the lack of noise.
The club have worked hard for years now to build up support among the vast body of students with whom they share the Belfield campus, establishing their identity as the only Eircom League club on the leafier end of Dublin's southside and, more recently, forging links with and running coaching schemes in the less privileged areas within the borough of Dún Laoghaire and Rathdown. Progress has been slow but, insist club officials, steady.
Still, it doesn't take long at one of UCD's home games to see how much more work there is to be done and the lack of support is probably not helped by the lack of connection between those who do show up on an average Friday evening. When Shelbourne or Bohemians move across the city to play they might well sing, "no one likes us, we don't care," but, well, that's not really this rather disparate group's kind of thing.
Quite a few of the bigger clubs could happily live without the couple of trips a season to Belfield and several of the more outspoken officials at other Premier Division outfits have openly questioned what the university club bring to an increasingly professional football league.
Certainly, when plans were drawn up for the 10-team top flight it was broadly accepted that it would not be good to have half that number drawn from within a four-mile radius of O'Connell Bridge and another two or three from the city's commuter belt. And there is little doubt about who the capital's bigger fish saw as the obvious candidates to make way for a Galway United, Sligo Rovers or, some day, perhaps, a rejuvenated Limerick.
Last season, their hopes seemed about to be realised when, two-thirds of the way through the campaign, UCD looked doomed. A run of just one defeat in 12 games, however, not only hauled the team well above bottom-of-the-table Bray Wanderers, but carried them three points clear of the play-off position to sixth place, above St Patrick's Athletic and Derry City, in what was possibly the league's most competitive lower half ever.
A few months on and Doolin is under no illusions about how disappointed some people would have been with that late-season revival.
Doolin, however, has few doubts about the contribution the club can continue to make on the pitch. "We can, for a start, try to improve the overall standard of the football played in the league," he says, "which is not to say we play like Real Madrid but just that when our goalkeeper gets the ball we don't get everyone to push on into the other half of the pitch and get him to roll it out 10 yards before hoofing it up the field. Summer football is all very well but there's no point getting new supporters in and then producing that sort of football, which is still what a lot of teams seem prepared to do."
He also points to the club's decent pitch and to a ground that is already pretty good and will soon be better, he argues, than a lot of others in the league. He believes that off the pitch, the club is probably better run than most others. "Frankly, I don't think there's many really who are entitled to look down on us," he says.
The plans for improved facilities to which Doolin refers will be unveiled this weekend at an alumni dinner where club secretary Dick Shakespeare and former players Packie Lynch and Darren O'Brien will launch a fund-raising drive aimed at raising €250,000 towards a new stand on the side of the pitch currently occupied by a grass bank. There will be 1,200 covered seats in the €850,000 development, which will leave the club with 2,000 seats and 5,000 square feet of space under the new stand, which is to be developed in a subsequent phase.
There is considerable optimism that graduates, reluctant to get into a situation whereby donations to the club might be seen to be funding players' wages, will provide the club's portion of the costs. The capital grants programme will provide the rest and everything will be in place so work can begin at the end of the season.
To commit themselves to such a development in the year the team went down would, of course, be a nightmare but Doolin, his team-captain Tony McDonnell and Shakespeare, all express confidence that the team will be competitive this year.
"In fairness, we've only had three real scares since we came up," says Shakespeare, "last season and the two years we ended up in the play-offs, and Paul did say the change-over in the seasons when we're basically looking at squeezing three seasons into two might cause problems for a team with so many young players."
The early signs are the coming months will again be tough, with the team still looking for their first goal and point ahead of last night's game against Shamrock Rovers at Inchicore.
"Of course it's going to be hard when you lose four players, fellas like Barry Ryan, Clive Delaney and Robert Doyle, all of whom were outstanding for us last season and sign two," says Doolin. "Most clubs are looking to hold onto what they've had the season before and then add to that, we're in a position where we've lost lads - we're not even getting money for them most of the time anymore - and we're not in a great position to replace them. I've never looked to use that as an excuse but it is a fact that you have to deal with."
Last week Alan Mahon was ruled out for six months by a serious injury at the end of a training session. Doolin says he may go back to the board in the hope of bringing in someone else. The chances of getting the money, he more or less admits, are not great. He'll have to cope with what he has, spot someone with potential in the club's other teams and bring them on fast. "That's life," he says, "it's different here." And for all the drawbacks the whole league is probably the richer for it.
