Nicky Reid, Pat Dolan and Martin Lawlor weren't the only men settling in for their first full season of National League management over the past couple of weeks. While they got on with the business of getting their respective clubs' campaigns under way last weekend back at Merrion Square Paul Walsh was kicking off his first full championship as the league's full-time development officer.

The founder of schoolboy outfit Greystones United at 16 and secretary of the local league a year later, Walsh is certainly no stranger to the domestic game. Given that since those days in the early 1980s he has, however, graduated from UCD with a Masters in Social Science, got the National Disabled Angling facility up and running and worked as a management consultant in London - where he also worked on the development of Millwall's football in the community scheme - elements of it needed some reminding of just who he was when he became involved once again.

In fact, it was from the English capital that, in the middle of last season, he was hired by the National League to turn some of the big talk that has been floating around the game here for the past few years into action. Given the tendency for the names of appointees to just about any senior position in football here over the years to have a familiar ring about them the success of Walsh's application was, he concedes, something of a surprise but this he puts down to a determination on the part of the league and the representatives of the clubs in it to move things on to a more professional footing.

A process he is finding just a little tricky to advance for the moment. "We will," as any team boss might tell his chairman "take a while to get the basics right before we start to see real progress."

To date too much of his time has been taken up with minor day to day stuff, run of the mill disputes, financial difficulties at individual clubs, "fire brigade actions" as he puts it. The target, though, is that over the coming season the administrative processes of the league will be completely overhauled, the rule book sorted out and Walsh's time freed up so that he might turn his attention to the grander scheme of things.

"Don't get me wrong, there is progress being made. We've just concluded a deal with RTE which will mean five domestic games as well as the Cup final being carried live, multi-camera highlights of 18 others and a National League slot in their Irish football magazine programme which will go out before each Champions' League match.

"The new deal with the English Premiership should be sorted out soon and we've continued to give considerable grants to clubs around the country but obviously in the long term there is an awful lot that remains to be done."

Poor marketing, bad press coverage and an outdated view of the league amongst the general public have often been blamed by clubs for small attendances but Walsh readily admits that much work remains to be done on the core product.

"Pitches" he says "must be improved because it's difficult to see just how good some of players are when the ball is bobbling all over the place and we must try to move to full time playing staffs.

"Spectator facilities in a lot of places are still very basic, I mean some grounds still don't have proper toilets for women - how can you expect a supporter, never mind a sponsor to bring his wife, a friend, a client to something like that."

With the Premiership providing the league's main rival for people's time and money it must also, he feels, in some ways set the standards. True, clubs here will never match the facilities of the top flight in England but comfortable seats, covered stands, decent refreshments and an "overall leisure experience" rather than just a game that's either good or bad "should be well within our capabilities."

The time scale is, by his reckoning, around 10 years before any truly dramatic chances will start to be seen here but things will, he feels, begin to get better a lot sooner than that. "It's going to happen in stages but somewhere down the line a club like Bray getting 7,000 to 10,000 at home games . . . why not? Look at their catchment area, it's just a question of getting the product right over a period of time."

Much depends, he says, on the clubs themselves, however. On their willingness to become more professional on and off the pitch and on the general will amongst all of those who run the game here to move it forward.

Many of them have, in contrast, argued that what was really absent was the leadership, innovation and, occasionally, common sense, required at national level. Few, with exceptions like Saint Patrick's Athletic and their Document for Change last season, have tended in the past to look beyond their own difficulties.

Now perhaps, if Walsh's own faith - in himself as well as in the potential of what he sees around him - is justified, a change is in sight.

The clock is ticking and the time is approaching when we may just see what everybody associated with this league is really made of.