UCD set to reap the rewards

A couple of years ago there was an all-too-familiar ring for the home supporters about this evening's eircom-sponsored National League premier division match between UCD and Kilkenny City.

A few of the last season's best players would be gone, a few of the bright new youngsters thrown in their place. It made for interesting viewing but the inevitability of yet another relegation dogfight would almost immediately loom large on the horizon.

A string of now well established players started their league days with the club but last summer the constant drain was finally halted when, for the first time, everybody stayed on with the club.

Now, under new manager Martin Moran, UCD managed to pull it off again and suddenly the Belfield outfit is beginning to reap the reward of its own investment. A settled squad meant qualification for Europe last year and they're still maturing . . . by UCD standards at least.

"Well, it's still not quite like any other club," says full back Eamonn McLoughlin who, at 23 is starting his seventh season with College.

"At any of the bigger sides a player would probably be hoping to break into the side at 20 and even then it might take him a while to establish himself and make the place his own. Here I'm probably one of the senior players already and I've got around 170 league games under my belt. That's not something you'd get the opportunity to do at too many other clubs."

McLoughlin concedes that the ongoing departures of the club's more experienced players was somewhat self perpetuating at Belfield and credits the current turnaround to a combination of a change in attitude on the part of the management and a realisation on the part of players that the potential existed for UCD to move on to the next level.

"The biggest thing was when a couple of the older lads, like Ciaran Kavanagh and Tony McDonnell passed up the chance to leave and signed new deals here instead.

"From that point on I think everybody started looking at it differently. The players started to feel that maybe you didn't have to go to some other club if you wanted to win things, that we could get there if we all stuck together and last year showed that we are definitely moving in the right direction."

After last season's fourth-place finish there is certainly a renewed sense of optimism around the club with McLoughlin, an agent for other footballers with Drury Sports Management, in his other career, voicing the opinion that anything short of repeating that finish would represent a disappointment.

And then there is the young signing from Manchester United, Kevin Grogan, who may well be the solution to one of the club's most persistent problems over the years.

At 18, Grogan was struggling physically with the full-time regime at Old Trafford and has returned to play a couple of seasons at Belfield with a view to resuming his professional career then. His impact has been immediate with a couple of hat-tricks scored in pre-season friendlies while his overall contribution is said to have been outstanding.

"Scoring goals would probably have been a weakness for us all right and Kevin looks like he can do that although nobody wants to get too carried away just yet because all we are going to end up doing is piling pressure on the lad and things are going to be bad when the defenders hear about him and starting kicking lumps out of him."

It's something the new arrival will just have to come to terms with, and quickly, but then there aren't too many who've passed through the scholarship system out at Belfield down the years who haven't had to learn that particular lesson.