Trust fund a fitting tribute to O'Neill

UCD's hopes of earning a place in European competition for the first time since they won the FAI Cup in 1984 may have taken a dent in Derry on Sunday but Dr Tony O'Neill would surely have been proud of the way they've been pushing at the bigger clubs in recent months.

O'Neill promised that things would be different this season, that everyone at the club was determined the annual tussle with relegation would become a thing of the past and so it proved.

A couple of players were persuaded to bring their experience to Belfield, some who have been with UCD for years were successfully encouraged to pass-up offers from outside. He may be gone but the club he devoted so much time to has never looked so strong.

This evening at the offices of Ernst and Young in Dublin some of those who passed through UCD will set out to remember O'Neill in a particularly fitting way.

Along with Keith Dignam (the first recipient of a soccer scholarship at the club), Fintan Drury, Michael McNulty, Pat Finn and current club secretary Brendan Dillon, the club will launch a trust fund. The aim is to raise £500,000 for the Dr Tony O'Neill Soccer Scholarship Trust and to run scholarships with the interest from the capital. It's an ambitious target but the club's fundraising record has been quite astonishing and, as Dillon points out, the highly successful careers enjoyed by so many who benefitted from the "Doc's" vision gives them quite a constituency in which to start passing the hat.

In any case there seems little doubt that the club will reach their target and that over the coming seasons the number of young footballers afforded the opportunity to study at Belfield and develop their game will reach new heights.

In the wake of O'Neill's death there was concern that much of the work with which he was identified might start to unravel. However, thanks to those he worked with, it can now be capitalised upon.

Quickly off the mark were the FAI and the Eircom sponsored National League. Officials from both organisations made it immediately clear the importance of the scholarship scheme and each committed to providing bursaries of £5,000 per year for the next 10 years.

"There's no question about the scheme, it will go on," says Dillon. "The only concern we have is with finding new players because no one really knows who was ringing the `Doc' through the year and tipping him off to this or that young lad."

So efficient was the network run by O'Neill and Theo Dunne that many of the scheme's participants were identified months before the official trials or the release of the leaving certificate results. And such was the club's loyalty to those with whom it had agreed a deal that a growing number over the years have effectively been put through their repeat year in the hope that they get the course they want.

Occasions like this evening's will ensure that all of that work continues which surely would have pleased O'Neill greatly.