Before the bulldozers arrive in Phibsborough to start work on the long-awaited redevelopment of Dalymount Park, Joe McGrath has started doing a bit of rebuilding of his own.

Lured back from New Zealand, where he had been the team manager for three years, McGrath has been quick to make his mark at his new home. The Dubliner has signed seven players - a couple of them yet to arrive from New Zealand - and there has been, if the League Cup campaign is anything to go by, a marked shift in emphasis in the team's playing style.

"We'll show you a bit of football this year," McGrath claims more than once as he sits in his office at the club, and early indications are that he'll be as good as his word.

"The game here is still far too physical. I mean, we've already played games where the other side has kicked lumps out of us and referees have let them away with it.

"When you compare the situation here with the North, where the game is miles behind the National League but players are allowed to play . . . teams that play football can be successful by doing that."

McGrath insists he'll take Bohemians, long since on the scenic route to success, down the beautiful road to glory. Playing ball will be the priority and he reckons he has the players to do that and end the club's 20-year championship famine.

"There's a great hunger here for the league," he says. "It's what everybody here at the club wants and it's what I'd hope to achieve. We'd like to do it this season but then there are so many stronglooking teams going into this season that you could end up being fifth or sixth and not really feeling that you'd done badly.

"If we don't do it this year, though, I'd say we certainly should be in a strong position for next season."

His confidence in the team making an impression is matched by his enthusiasm for many of the individual players. Raffaele De Gregorio, one of four New Zealanders brought in, and Fergal Harkin receive particularly lavish praise, while Derek Swan, whose hat-trick on Sunday indicates a return to the form of two seasons ago, is amongst the inherited players who are singled out.

"We have a lot of quality here. Fergal has come back from Leicester after not getting a look in over there but he's better than a couple of the lads who are playing in the Irish midfield at the moment, while Raffaele has a beautiful touch with either foot and great vision.

"Throughout the whole squad, though, there's a great spirit. Everybody has worked very hard over the last couple of weeks and there's a good competitiveness there. We've gone from being what might be considered an old squad (James Coll, Joe Hanrahan and Dave Henderson were among the summer departures) to being a young one (of the seven arrivals, Harkin, De Gregorio and Dean Dodds are all 21 or younger) but we have the sort of experience within the squad that the younger players can learn from and I'm sure that they'll improve over the season here."

In the longer term McGrath also hopes to continue the development of Bohemians' youth development programme, which was established a few years ago and now includes 17 schoolboy teams. Gerry Reddy has just been appointed youth development officer and McGrath has underlined his commitment to bringing through local talent by signing several promising teenagers from Stella Maris and St Joseph's Boys.

"They're young and it's difficult for them to go into the team at that age because the games are so physical, but I'll play them because it's the only way that we are going to start showing our best young players that there's an alternative to giving up their education and heading to England at 16 or 17.

"Hopefully they'll still get over there in a year or two but the difference is they'll be better players for having been with us for a while and experience shows that the ones who go over after having played in the National League for a while stay there. It's a message that we have to get across."

So, some hectic times ahead at a club that many thought would settle for survival on the pitch while the serious work went on all around it.

"Yeah, that's probably what a few people here were thinking too but I said to them, `There's not much point in having a nice ground and a crap team'."

As it happens, he notes happily, they didn't need a whole lot of convincing.