THEY WERE VERY GOOD UNDER RAY TREACY AND THEY HAD SOME REALLY GOOD PLAYERS, BUT THERE ALWAYS SEEMED TO BE A PROBLEM IN THE CLUB.
IT was the year the world waved goodbye to supersonic aircraft Concorde as it embarked on its final flight - and Manchester United supporters said hello to Cristiano Ronaldo for the first time.
And just three weeks after the Portuguese legend joined Alex Ferguson’s Red Devils in the summer of 2003, Drogheda United also made one of their best ever signings.
The board of directors didn’t know it at the time, but the Boynesiders were set for a steep ascent under new manager Paul Doolin who was about to transform the fortunes of the ‘yo-yo’ club - so called because it kept going up and down between the divisions.
Doolin’s predecessor Harry McCue had led the Drogs to a memorable promotion in 2002, but he only kept them up after a miracle comeback saw them squeeze past Galway United in a play-off and in August 2003 - the first season of summer soccer - they were once more facing a struggle to beat the drop.
McCue was relieved of his duties and Drogheda’s board of directors turned their attentions to a young manager who had just retired after a hugely successful playing career - but first they had to prise him away from UCD, where he had initially gone as a player two years earlier.
Looking back at his time towards the end of his playing career in the early Noughties, Doolin recalled: ‘The way you were qualified then [as a manager] was, how did you do as a player, so if you looked at my record you’d say ‘sure, he has to get a job’, but I wasn’t offered any.
‘Actually, I spoke to Dundalk about a job, but I was still playing and wanted to still play at that time, late on in my career. I was grateful for the opportunity [at Dundalk], but I said I would go for another year as a player.
‘Just because you are a very, very good player - and I’m not saying that I am - it doesn’t always guarantee you - as we see whether it’s in Spain, the Premier League or the League of Ireland - it doesn’t always make you a good coach, so I was happy enough to start on the badges.
‘A few of us did one of the courses in Kings Hospital, the B Licence, From there [UCD manager] Martin Moran gave me a call one day and wanted to have a chat with me and it worked out further down the road that the best thing I could have done was join UCD.
‘Martin was still there as a manager and I became player/ coach, and then Martin decided to step aside and I became player/manager.
‘The type of player that I was at the latter end of my career, I was always a talker on the pitch and helping people along and it was a good thing there because there were a lot of younger players. It was a very enjoyable time and the club was very good.
‘You are not going to be able to sign [many] players. We signed some from outside, but it was basically based on the scholarship scheme and there were some really good players there, to be fair.
‘But I don’t really understand people at top clubs who say they need four or five years [to achieve success]. At UCD we changed [the squad] every year because if any of your players were good they were taken away from you.
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think UCD might have had more success than Drogheda because they’d won the FAI Cup [in 1984], beating Shamrock Rovers that famous night in Tolka Park.
‘The facilities were absolutely brilliant and the pitch was very good and it gave me the insight into seeing, can you transfer what you did as a player to a coach and - the biggest thing about coaching to me - can you get people to do what you ask them or what you want them to do.’
So given that Drogheda were just one place above bottom club UCD in the Premier Division table at the time, wasn’t it a difficult decision for Doolin to swap one relegation battle for another?
Reflecting on the situation, he said: ‘The year before UCD were in a precarious position because the league went [from 12] to 10 teams and that was probably designed to get teams like UCD who don’t have a lot of support.
‘We were below Drogheda, I think, the previous year and we got out of it and stayed in the 10-team league, which was brilliant. Drogheda ended up in the relegation play-off and that says enough for you.
‘I had been there for two and a half years and in my opinion the likes of a job like UCD, it’s either a start there or you finish there maybe further down the line, but it wasn’t really an easy choice [to move to Drogheda].’
During his conversations with the board before being offered the job, Doolin was always mindful of the club’s chequered history and it was that as much as anything which made him think very carefully about saying yes.
‘The very first meeting I think [board members] Vincent Hoey, Chris Byrne and Eugene O’Connor were there and a lot of other people as well and they asked me about the club, and I remember leaving that meeting saying to myself ‘we’ll see what happens’. Then I got a call - I think it was Chris - and I went to the club and again we had a chat.
‘They had great ambitions, but remember, you are not talking about a club that was in mid-table.
‘Maybe years before that they were very good under Ray Treacy of course and they had some really great players like Martin Murray and Matt Bradley, but there always seemed to be a problem in the club and the league is difficult enough at the best of times. There was always great plans, but there seemed to be money problems and they’d stay up or go down and go back up again.
‘If I was leaving UCD to go to Shamrock Rovers or Dundalk, you’d say to yourself they’re second or third in the league, but I was going to a club that was just above where I was, so it wasn’t a choice where people can say ‘you can’t turn down a job like that, can you?’.’
Of course, Doolin eventually accepted the offer of managing Drogheda United, but from day one the reality of the task he faced to turn things around was laid bare.
‘The first night I went to training was over on the Navan road,’ he recalled, ‘and I remember having a meeting with the club afterwards and this is what I did say - it was like leaving Manchester United to go to Ragball Rovers.
‘There were 14 league games to go and the first goal was to avoid relegation because we were just above UCD, so I thought what’s the best thing I can do here in terms of training facilities?
‘We ended up using United Park because it was coming to the latter part of the season and we weren’t going to get into