Not for the first time this season Derry City came to Dublin at the weekend and looked a fairly sorry sight. After a 3-0 defeat by Shamrock Rovers in which poor defending early on allowed their hosts to kill off the game, manager Kevin Mahon admitted that his young squad have some way to go before they are in a position to compete with the league's more flush outfits. Back at home, however, things have at least started to move in the right direction. It's a little over two years now since things started to change. Under Felix Healy there had been considerable success with City winning the league in 199697 and only narrowly missing out on the double when they were beaten 2-0 by Shelbourne in that season's cup final.

Even Healy agreed, however, that the state of the club's finances meant that changes, radical changes, were inevitable.

Over the next two close seasons, wage levels were dramatically cut back and most of the players who were not based locally were let go. Younger, promising but less expensive replacements were signed, and the hope now is that within a year or two they will start to form the backbone of the next City panel capable of challenging for senior honours.

Behind the scenes, the club's restructuring has been even more dramatic and three weeks ago, with the granting of full planning permission for a new £700,000 stand, City took a major step towards reorganising itself and the way it deals with the community in which it is based.

What is unusual about the club's new development is that there will be just 300 seats provided. More seats will be installed at a later date by the city council, which owns the ground. For the moment, the 3,000 seats on the other side of the ground are considered sufficient. Instead, the key element in the planned development will be the provision of corporate facilities which can be used as classrooms on the 13 days a fortnight when no football is being played at the Brandywell.

The plan, one modelled on some of the leading "Football in the Community" schemes run in England and in particular on the one initiated by Grimsby Town with whom City have forged strong links in recent years, is to support the education of local youngsters, particularly those with special needs, while also developing a far stronger presence in the community.

In Grimsby, the approach has been highly successful and in England generally, the educational aspect has become accepted to the extent that specially produced textbooks, using football as a way of interesting youngsters in learning, have been approved by the authorities.

In Derry, in around two years, the hope is to have a trust up and running - one independent of City itself - which will provide a valuable service to the young people of the area and employ the club's footballers to work within the community.

"In effect," says club secretary Kevin Friel, "our side of the bargain would be that we would be getting full-time players while only paying them for being part-time because the trust would be paying them the rest of the time.

"But for that we would be putting a lot back into the community by way of facilities and the work with schools and clubs that the players would be doing and in the long term, we feel we would reap the benefits of that investment."

That investment would consist of up to 60 per cent of the capital expenditure with the rest expected to be provided by the British National Lottery. Work could start on the new facilities next summer and Friel is optimistic that grants from other bodies will actually bring the total funding sourced from outside to above 50 per cent. The impact on the club should start to be felt around two years from now when the budget for the playing side of things should start to recover. Then, it is hoped, average crowds will start to move back up from their current level of between 1,000 and 1,500 per game to the medium-term target of between 2,500 and 3,000.

At that stage, Friel and his fellow directors believe there will be the foundations for long-term growth which no fleeting success on the pitch can ever provide.