Kevin Doherty may have delivered his last letter, but not before signing a major document of his own last November.
For two years, the Drogheda United boss juggled his managerial role with his day job as an An Post employee, but a full-time contract signed in November means that he can now dedicate his time to the SSE Airtricity Men's Premier Division club.
The news followed on from a takeover by American sports investment fund Trivela Group, who were wholly impressed with the work the former Shelbourne manager had done since taking the reins ahead of the 2022 season.
The group's governance structure consists of managing director Benjamin Boycott, vice-president Wesley Hill and VP of football Matt Jordan, and they have a long-term ambition to turn Drogheda United into a full-time outfit.
The first item on the agenda was to get Doherty to sign on the dotted line, and he is only too happy with how things are going so far.
"It's a different way life for me and hopefully in a couple of years everyone at the club will have that," Doherty told RTÉ Sport at the 2024 League of Ireland launch. "That’s the ambition. The new owners have been great.
"I've had to build up relationships, particularly with Wes and Matt, and I would have spoken to Ben a number of times. I'm very thankful to them for what we've started to do. We now have a full-time academy manager [John Donohue] as well, which is a massive step for the club because you want to be trying to get players through. It adds to the whole story when you have a local player in your team.
"I think we're all ambitious. There will be a lot of talk and maybe different expectations. "Slow progress" are the words that we’ve been using. What we want to do is get better as we go along. That said, we’re certainly going in the right direction."
For now, most Drogheda players still retain day jobs, but performances on the pitch last season have also contributed to these greater expectations. They won away from home at all of the top three, delighting supporters of the title-chasing clubs at various points in the season.
Those kinds of results helped to keep their own heads well above relegation waters and Doherty can see why they may have picked up neutral admirers along the way.
"People probably bought into the whole us being the only part-time team in the league, which we still will be this year, most of our players are still working," he says. "But going and beating Derry at the Brandywell and beating Rovers in Tallaght and beating St Pat's twice shows what we can do."
Doherty also feels that his new full-time role shouldn't lead to complacency, as he speaks about the size of the task facing his side this season.
"The boring answer is that we’ll be taking every game on its merits," he says. "I won’t be the first manager to say this but the league is going to be really competitive and it was last year. We managed to do well last year, we picked up some great results and it certainly won’t be easy this year. I’m looking forward to getting going. We have Derry away first so it’s not exactly an easy start, but you could be playing anybody home or away and you’d say it’s a tough game."
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