IT TOOK his manager Pat Fenlon an entire playing career to develop such a complex relationship with the various Dublin clubs but Bohemians’ Keith Buckley is steeped in quite a few of the capital’s various rivalries while still in his teens.

Given his form this season, the young midfielder is likely to start tomorrow afternoon’s Ford-sponsored FAI Cup semi-final for Bohemians at Dalymount Park but it won’t be his first taste of the competition’s last four . . . he was due to be in with his fellow Shelbourne fans for last night’s first semi at Tolka.

As that’s not enough of a conflict of interest, after just about every game it’s down to the pub where the punters are, he says with a laugh, Rovers to a man. The 19-year-old, in fact, works in the Windjammer just 50 metres or so from the Liffey and enjoys the banter with the punters there. “They all say: ‘Why don’t you move to Rovers?’ But not a chance,” he says with a laugh.

Buckley, who scored his side’s second in the 2-0 win over UCD last week, is just one of the remarkable batch of young players, many of them having come through the ranks up the road at Belvedere, that Fenlon has thrown in at the deep end this year as the Bohemians budget has been slashed. Fenlon has had to revise just about everything from his ambitions to the average age of his players downwards.

Like the housing market, he readily accepts, things may have some way to go before finally bottoming out at the club but towards the end of a difficult year the 42-year-old sounds more upbeat about his position than he has for some time. And things, he notes, have not quite reached the stage they had during his last season at Buckley’s other club.

“At Shelbourne it was probably worse,” he says, “because we went 13, 14, 15 weeks without being paid whereas at Bohs, to be fair to the people there, they’ve paid the wages. At Shels we also sort of knew what was coming because if you go that long without being paid then you sort of know what’s down the road but with Bohemians it’s more uncertainty about what’s going on at the club because nobody really knows where it’s going to come the end of the season.

“We don’t have any players under contract at the end of the season which will be a help for the club but I don’t think that will be the big issue, whether we did or not, it probably wouldn’t make that much difference to the big picture. It’s about how the club can sort out the mess that it’s in and that’s going to take a lot of work from everybody.”

A debt of about €4 million is due to be repaid early next year and nobody seems sure where the money might come from. At a board meeting this week, though, Fenlon feels that progress was made on addressing some outstanding problems in relation to the more immediate financial situation. Having spent most of this campaign looking like a man who wished that exit strategies were part of the curriculum on coaching courses, he now talks tentatively about a willingness to stay on beyond the end of the season.

“Well, I don’t want to go anywhere at the moment,” he says. “And I don’t have a problem committing myself to the club in the longer term to be honest once I’m in the picture and I know that there’s a plan and a structure going forward. If it means we have a much smaller budget next year then that’s not a major issue for me. It’s something that the club have to look at.

“There has to be a plan, though, there has to be a long-term plan as to how the club is structured. You just can’t keep everything going the way they have for the last season or two just going from season to season.”

First up, though, is the business of tomorrow when a win over Sligo Rovers would mean revenge for last year’s rather one-sided defeat at the same stage of the competition and a cup final for a group of players who have significantly exceeded expectations.

“Like I say, I don’t think it’s important from a money point of view,” he says. “I was speaking to people who were involved in last year’s final and I was staggered to hear the amount of money that they got out of it . . . considering, I think, there was 38,000 people at it.

“No, for us, this cup semi-final is about getting to a cup final and playing in the Aviva and picking up a medal because, at the end of the day, that’s really what it’s about for them. We’ve got some young lads here – we’ve got some senior lads too – but we’ve got some young lads for whom it would be great to reach a cup final at this stage of their career.”

The one problem, he admits, is that Sligo Rovers retain almost all of the team that “murdered” Bohemians on home soil in last year’s game “They’re a good side,” Fenlon says. “They’ve won the League Cup, the FAI Cup, they’ve been improving since he (Paul Cook) has been there and I think they’ve improved again this year but they’ll be a little bit disappointed with the way it’s ended for them in the league and that might go either way for them in this game.”

The home side’s hopes of victory aren’t helped by the loss through suspension of Liam Burns, Christy Fagan and Anto Flood (the particular order in which the club’s league games were rescheduled resulted in them being unavailable and Fenlon is unhappy about it) while Killian Brennan and Aidan Price are 50/50. Owen Heary and Mark Rossiter have a chance of playing.

Cook has neither injury nor suspension concerns.