Theo Dunne handed Stephen McPhail a sock and told him to fill it with cash, jewellery and watches.
It was a job the future Ireland and Leeds midfielder performed on a regular basis for the then Home Farm manager.
McPhail - now the Shamrock Rovers sporting director - was only a kid but a regular presence around Dunne’s first-team in Whitehall.
Because of family connections, he travelled on the senior team bus for the club he later played for as a youth, before his move to England.
Whether Home Farm were home or away, Dunne entrusted McPhail with keeping the players’ valuables safe in that sock during matches.
By the time he was 11 or 12, when he wasn’t playing security guard, McPhail occasionally mucked in at training, as Stephen McGuinness recalls.
“We had an okay team, but there weren't loads of lads breaking through,” said the PFA Ireland boss who made his senior breakthrough - as a teenager - under Dunne at Home Farm.
“At training one night, we were working on deliveries into the box, but the lad putting the balls in wasn’t great.
"McPhail was only a boy but Theo got him to take the corners and told the seasoned pro to watch, learn and try to copy him!
“Theo had a great eye for talented players and always said if you were good enough, you were old enough.
“He would tell us that he’d have McPhail in the team ahead of some of us if he could, but he wasn’t allowed to as he wasn’t 15.
“But that’s what Theo was brilliant at. Other managers wanted big budgets and professional players.
“Theo also wanted to win, but it wasn't about glory. It was about the development of players and he gave his life to it.”
While Dunne had that time with Home Farm, he was synonymous with UCD.
And tonight, the College players will don black armbands against Dundalk at Oriel Park in memory of the club’s former FAI Cup winning manager who has died, aged 85.
As a player, Dunne was a league and cup winner with Shelbourne and captained the Reds into European battle against Barcelona at the Nou Camp in 1963.
Then as a manager, he led UCD to FAI Cup final glory over Shamrock Rovers in 1984.
The following year, he was at the helm as College narrowly went down 1-0 on aggregate to Everton - who he supported as a boy - in the Cup Winners Cup.
“He had a great knack of making you feel like you were a great player even if you weren't,” said McGuinness of Dunne, who was also UCD’s honorary vice-president.
"He played at such a high level but he always had time for young players, so I don’t think it's a coincidence that he worked at UCD and Home Farm.”
McGuinness laughs at one memory from early in his career when Dunne unconventionally put pep in his team’s step before a midweek game on a bitterly cold night.
“He pulled the players just before we walked out. We all lined up and he put a shot of whiskey in a glass and handed it to us, one by one.
“I was only 19 or so, and naively asked if it was medicine? The lad in front of me banged it into him and off he went, so I did the same.
“Because of the weather, Theo said it would give us a burst. Well, I knocked it back and it nearly killed me as I didn’t drink at the time!
“It gave us a bump alright and we won the game.
“He pulled us after and said not to worry, he wouldn’t be doing that all the time but knew it would help as a manager had done it to him. That always stuck with me.
“Ronnie Whelan Snr was his assistant and the two of them were just presidential figures in Irish football.”
At UCD, club secretary Dick Shakespeare had a front row seat working alongside the club’s holy trinity of Dunne, Tony ‘The Doc’ O’Neill and George Casey.
“They were such positive influences on me,” he says, joking that Dunne’s time at Home Farm was nothing more than “a little holiday for him” either side of his lengthy College stints.
Shakespeare said: “Theo was coaching with Ronnie Whelan Snr at Home Farm and we played against them in Whitehall one day.
‘Myself and the Doc were in the UCD dugout, and Theo and Ronnie were in the Home Farm one.
“The ball goes out for a throw and it goes Home Farm’s way. Theo jumps up and is effing and blinding at the referee that it’s a College ball.
“He forgot who he was managing!
Shakespeare recalls the camaraderie that was forged at UCD because of the ‘work hard, play hard’ attitude.
“Theo was an absolute gentleman, but he was also hard as nails and had a great football brain,” he continued.
“A lot of thought went into team selection on a Thursday evening. We’d be over in the Montrose Hotel after training.
“‘C’mon we’ll go for an omelette’, Theo would say. That was our code for a steak.
“We’d be over there and Theo would have 22 beer mats spread out across all the tables, trying to figure out our team and the opposition’s.
“He used to say that the great thing about College was that you never came home on the same day you went out.
“You’d go training Tuesday and Thursday, but get home on Wednesday and Friday.
“We played every Sunday and after the game, Theo and his brothers would rattle off the songs in the Montrose. He had a fantastic singing voice.
“There wasn't an unenjoyable moment and it was just great craic. Theo, Doc and Casey - they were great influences and influencers of people.
“They were three of my best mates and now they’re all on the piss up above.
“Theo and Doc were like the odd couple, but they appreciated each other’s strengths. Fundamentally it worked, and it was just great craic.”
Dunne’s visits to the Belfield campus in recent years were to watch his grandson Evan Caffrey playing for UCD.
This year, Caffrey is lining out alongside his cousin Gavin Molloy having been signed by Damien Duff for Shelbourne, the club where Dunne made his name as a player.
After the news of Dunne’s passing last weekend, it was notable across social media just how many former players were thankful to Dunne for giving them their leg up in the game
“A lot of us owe him for that,” said McGuinness who would later win leagues with St Pat’s and an FAI Cup with Dundalk.
“He was an absolute gentleman but there was a tough side to him and working for Theo was an eye-opener.
“He was a hard task master and had us on beaches and we trained on the side of a hill, but he let you enjoy yourself.
“He always reminded us that football is a short career and to enjoy it because it's over like that - and he's so right.
“He wanted us to win and train hard but he saw the other side of the game too and said that was important.
“But he set foundations for us as players and his training was probably the toughest I ever experienced, but he saw no shortcuts to being a professional player.”
And McGuinness added: “You had to work hard and he always told us that if you want something in life to go and get it because nobody will hand it to you.
“I lived by that. I may have lacked skills, but I had determination to be a footballer because Theo told us not to wait for anything and to go get it.
“But while he wanted to win, it wasn't about glory. It was about the development of players.
“He gave his life to developing young players at UCD and Home Farm and he was ahead of his time in that regard.”
