It was that famous day in Fairview Park when Roy Keane supposedly earned a move to Nottingham Forest and a ticket to greatness by single-handedly destroying Belvedere in an FAI Youths Cup match. That's the myth but people who were there that day have a different memory.

"Roy Keane played that day but he was nothing special. His Cobh Ramblers team lost 4-0 to us and Keane hardly kicked a ball, Liam Dunne marked him out of the game," Stephen Kenny recalls. "Keane was great in the first game down in Cork, and we were lucky to get away with a draw that day. The move to Forest was a done-deal before that match against Belvedere, but on the day we were by far the better team."

Kenny, now manager of Bohemians, spent two years at Belvedere as a schoolboy, part of a team which had great success as schoolboys but little glory as adults. Kenny's own playing career - just four games in the League of Ireland First Division for Home Farm's amateur side - sums up the career path for many of his team-mates on that Belvo side. But he reckons that their lack of success was a back-handed compliment to what they learned at Belvedere.

"We had a very good team with a lot of great players. Liam Dunne was the man of the moment but apart from that there were no real stars. We were a good team unit but a lot of us struggled when we made the step-up to the League of Ireland after leaving Belvedere," says Kenny, who played in a side managed by Martin Cooke and Pat Quinn and coached by Noel O'Reilly.

"The culture in the LOI at the time, the start of the '90s, was very much a long ball game - direct football which was not something we were used to at Belvedere. We weren't taught to kick it long at Belvedere; we were told to play the game the right way in the right spirit, and there wasn't a lot of room for that in the League of Ireland at the time."

Kenny moved to Belvedere from Bluebell after a short stop-off at Hillcrest and almost immediately became part of a very promising U17 team. They made their name by beating Belvedere's U18 side in an FAI Youths Cup match. He spent only two years there but Belvedere left an indelible mark on Kenny, who became the youngest manager in National League history when he took over Longford Town in 1998 at the age of 27.

"I really enjoyed my time at Belvedere. We didn't have the best of facilities - we often trained in Mountjoy Square, and we didn't always have showers, although I know that the club are investing a lot of money in facilities now and things are much better," Kenny recalls.

As one of only two southsiders on the team ( Pat Curran was the other ), playing for Belvedere was at times difficult for the Tallaght-based Kenny, but he made all sacrifices necessary. "We had to get two buses to make it to Fairview Park in time for training at 10am on Saturdays, but we never missed training.

"Pat Quinn and Martin Cooke were great managers and I also learned a lot from Noel O'Reilly. I was delighted to get to work under Noel again when I was manager of the U21 team at St Pats and Noel was assistant manager of the first team.

"Noel's philosophy and psychology really opened up my eyes, He had a very unusual but effective way of getting his message across in a team-talk and that's something I tried to learn from. Belvedere was an inspiration to me in what I tried to do later in my career.

"To me the strength of Belvedere was the quality of the people involved. And there was also their philosophy of football. To me it was a different emphasis - it was absolute football, the way the game should be played. Belvedere was a breath of fresh air.

There was also a great team spirit. Myself, Keith Brady, David Hamilton, Liam Dunne, we all knew each others' girlfriends. We hung around together and still see each other occasionally - I met Liam Dunne and his wife when I was on holidays in Spain last year and we had a few good nights out."

Kenny doesn't have to travel too far to see some of his old team-mates. Bohemians team train every day in the ALSAA complex at Dublin airport, where the Aer Lingus team also train, so Kenny sees Aer Lingus manager Terry Murphy and players Geoff Adams and David Hamilton regularly. Hamilton, who had a spell with Bohemians, qualified as a physio and worked for Kenny's Longford Town side in their UEFA Cup venture in Bulgaria two years ago.

"One thing I remember from Belvedere was the nights out," Kenny smiles. "After matches we had many good nights out and pints, often in the Annesley House in Fairview, although we were often put in an upstairs lounge because some of us didn't look over 18. Noel O'Reilly's guitar was the centre of attention.

"Belvedere always realised the importance of having a good team spirit, something I have tried to bring into Longford and Bohemians since then. "But most important of all was the football and the notion of playing the game the right way. That, to me, was Belvedere's greatest achievement."