The night word got around that Mick Doohan was set to leave Dundalk for his old club Bray Wanderers, Dundalk's Scottish veteran Tom McNulty and a few of his other team-mates gave the 31-year-old quite a ribbing. Dundalk were, at the time, in the depths of a financial crisis but on the pitch they seemed to be turning the corner while Pat Devlin's side were slipping steadily down the table after what had been a surprisingly strong start to the season.
In the circumstances, Doohan admits that there was a certain amount of mirth that night about the fact that he appeared to be leaping out of the frying pan and straight into the fire. "They thought I was a bit of an eejit okay," he recalls.
Doohan is aiming to move one step closer to having the last laugh when Wanderers take on Sligo Rovers in the quarter-final of the FAI Cup at the Showgrounds on Saturday night. Wanderers' league form has improved to the point where Premier Division survival once again looks to be attainable and a run to a Cup final . . . well, that would knock the grin off a certain Scotsman's face all right.
Doohan is not counting chickens yet, but he has no regrets about returning from the club where he won a league championship medal to the one he helped to a Cup triumph almost a decade ago.
The big Dubliner plays at centre half for Bray, having started out as a left winger at St Joseph's Boys, playing at full back in his initial stint at Bray and then being moved up front by Dermot Keely for Dundalk. "I still sort of prefer playing up front," he says now "but to be fair I don't mind too much where I end up as long as I'm involved."
There's little chance of him not being at the heart of things when Bray travel to Sligo on Saturday. Since arriving from Oriel Park in early December Doohan has been an ever-present in an increasingly settled and solid Bray side.
He arrived just as Bo McKeever was due to start on a series of suspensions so he went straight into the side, but a couple of goals in his first six games and an immediate rapport with defensive partner Jody Lynch helped to make the starting slot his own. McKeever, available again and raring to go, will probably watch the bulk of this weekend's game from the sidelines.
McKeever's absence from the starting line up will mean that Doohan will be one of the only remaining links between this Saturday's starting line-up and the team that beat St Francis in the FAI Cup final at Lansdowne Road back in 1990.
Doohan is impressed with the way that the club and team have come on in the intervening years. "Well, for one thing we train a lot more than we did then, maybe four times a week now instead of a couple of nights back then and the whole set up with coaches and the attitude is far better.
"The squad is a lot younger too. Pat (Devlin) and the others involved on the management side have done a great job in bringing in so many young players and the potential is there for there to be a really great team here in a couple of years time."
Some of that work may be wasted if the club are relegated this season. The prospects of attracting the best young players would be diminished if the team is trying to battle its way out of the first division.
Battling might be on the agenda this week too if the side's last visit to the Showgrounds is anything to go by. The game in late January was marred when two of the visiting players suffering broken ankles. But Doohan feels Bray's players won't become distracted with attempting to avenge what most observers felt were terrible challenges on Aaron Lynch and Jason Byrne.
"Even that day the second half passed off more or less without incident so I don't think there'll be any problem this time. The main thing for us now is to get through to the semi-finals and I think everybody is too focused on that to do anything stupid."
