National League: Emmet Malone talks to a Derry City stalwart before Friday's crucial game against Cork City

It's almost a decade since Gary Beckett arrived at the Brandywell from Irish league side Coleraine and over those years he's seen a few Derry City managers come and go.

Under Felix Healy, the man who signed him, the Candystripes won the league back in 1997 but the good times have been few and far between since as the title-winning team gradually fragmented and the club eventually came to find itself fighting an almost annual battle at the other end of the Premier Division table.

Last season's arrival of Stephen Kenny, reckons the 32-year-old striker, provided the jolt City so desperately needed, but not much more than a year on even Beckett is struggling to comprehend just how it is that he and his team-mates have come quite so far so fast.

"I don't think professionalism is a big enough word to describe what he (Kenny) has brought to this club, but I think from early on all the players realised he was somebody who could really turn the place around.

"What's still a little bit amazing is how quickly it's all happened.

"When he arrived we were down there, battling against relegation yet again and we were all fed up with it really.

"Now look at us . . . we're in the Uefa Cup, the Setanta Cup, we've won the League Cup and there's the chance for us to take the league on Friday night in Cork. It's where a club like Derry should always have been but it's a long, long way from the reality of the last few years."

It looked for a while, as it happens, as though Beckett might have been one of the first victims of the Kenny revolution last year. Having been appointed a couple of days before a cup game at Shelbourne, the new manager rang the striker at home late that night to see if he could travel early to the game but Beckett couldn't get the day off from his job with the post office.

"At the time we probably wouldn't have been going down there expecting a lot," he says. "I mean we ended up drawing and then beating them back up here on penalties, but you couldn't have planned it that away. Come to think of it, though, the manager probably did: he seems to be that sort of person.

"Anyway, I just couldn't skip my round and it didn't help my cause," he recalls. "I knew it wasn't the best of starts and sure enough I lost my place. I had to be patient then but after a while I got back in for a run of a few games and I think he saw that I could play a bit.

"Anyway, I've just signed a new two-year deal and I have my testimonial next season so I must have done something to impress him at some stage."

It was not, he admits, his goalscoring that caught the new manager's eye. With just one goal in 25 games so far this season he makes no bones about the fact that he falls short in that department, but his ability to create chances for those around him, primarily Mark Farren this season, has been crucial to the team's success.

"Now my ambition is definitely to end my career here. Well, I never wanted to go anywhere else to be honest but, take my word for it, it's a better place to be these days and there's a real belief around the club that we can be successful going forward."

More immediately there is the question of ensuring this season is adjudged to be a success. Something, Beckett feels, on which the bar has been raised somewhat since the start of the campaign.

"You could say that Cork would always have been seen as title contenders this year and we would have settled for coming second but the last few months has changed all that," he says.

"You can't get stuck with having the set of expectations you had at the start of the season. The fact is we've played well enough to be top of the league going into this game and if we're not still there then we'll be massively disappointed, the whole season will end up feeling mediocre."

If winning the title is the main priority then showing people that they are good enough to do it is also high on the agenda, he says, for there is a feeling around Derry that they have not quite got the credit they have deserved over the past few months.

"I keep reading how Cork have the better team and yeah, it gets a little bit annoying after a while. I mean, we won something like 10 home games in a row, scoring two or three goals in every game but because the lads in the Dublin papers didn't see that much of us we're supposed to be 'well organised'.

"Organised," he repeats scornfully. "What exactly is that supposed to mean. I think we're a little bit more than organised."

Tomorrow night, at Turner's Cross, he hopes they'll prove it.