It has taken 15 tough seasons in TM, 7 of those battling against the best Ireland has to offer, but finally Hubbs has delivered the goods for The IRB faithful. Season 17 draws to a close with Na Fianna sitting proudly atop the League of Ireland table. We caught up with Hubbs to get his views on the season gone and what the future has in store for NF.

-Well I have to start with a big hearty congratulations on winning your very first LOI Championship. How does it feel to finally be at summit of Irish football?

Thanks Biff, I would also like to say thank you for all of those managers who have congratulated me on forum. We are very pleased obviously, we have been working hard as a team towards this and this year it has not all been for naught.

- A lot of managers get disillusioned when results and leagues don’t go their way, some even choose to leave the game altogether. You are one of the veterans of the Irish leagues (here since Season 3) and your perseverance certainly paid off. Winning the Championship was a perfect way to cap off your 15th season in the game but it was a long wait! Was there ever a point when you felt like throwing in the towel on the game?

There have been loads of times where I considered packing it in. When the Dublin affair cost us the league I considered packing it in, that was a real low. When we lost half the team to injuries on the run in like we did in season 13, with a real chance at the league, I thought it was about time I dropped out of the game too. There are two reasons that we have not packed it in though. Firstly, I am bloody pig-headed and so we wanted to keep going until we did manage a win and secondly I have assembled a team of lads who I want to keep together. We have worked hard and there are a few lads with us who have been almost since the start. They deserved a run at the league and we have finally delivered it.

-The past few seasons have seen an interesting trend developing in the LOI. The last two Champions have struggled greatly to carry over their form. Shamrock Hoops were relegated in the play-offs and last year’s champs Askeaton only avoided the play-offs on goal difference. Is the era of back-to-back LOI Champions well and truly over?

I hope so although Les has been building a team this season designed to do well in the new ME. Until we see that there is no way of knowing whether or not the strongest will always win. Because there are so many good managers and CB in the league :) anybody can beat anybody on their day and I would like to think that despite the new ME that will still be able to happen. As long as the team with the most money/ASI does not automatically win (as it did in the ME trials) then this will continue to be an exciting league where the nous and ability of managers will be as important as the amount of money he can throw at his team.

-Newly promoted sides have again struggled in the LOI with 4 of the 5 newbies finishing in the bottom 6. You took 8 seasons to reach the LOI but you haven’t looked back since. What advice would you give to all the budding LOI sides out there to help them avoid the yo-yo drop back to D2?

My advice to those looking to come up is don’t come up too early. I know that people just want to win and sometimes your team is just too good not to go up but if you do plan on making the trip into the top division make sure you are ready for it. We spent quite some time in Div 2.1, still the hardest of the 2nd divs BTW :), building up our infrastructure, getting our finances under control and bringing together a team that was good enough to keep us in contention. Keep some money back too, at some stage during the season you will more than likely struggle, be it through injuries or suspensions etc, or you will identify a weakness in your squad that will need filling. Just fill it, look on the transfer market, find a player who will do the job for you better than what you have and buy them, the longer you try and wait for a bargain, the more games you may lose due to the deficiency.

-Great advice! So who was your player of the season?

Matty. The lad is a legend at 34 he just keeps going and going and is a real inspiration to the young lads in the team. When he retires, which I think he will announce at the end of this season, we will be losing one of the best players that we have ever had. He has been here with us for most of our time in the top flight and it really will be a sad day for the team when he eventually goes.

-What areas of your squad were you disappointed with this year (if any)?

Last season we scored more goals in the league than anybody but we conceded far too many. Before the season started we needed to get ourselves a couple of new defenders and we bought some. Ads and Pedro have done a great job for us and if we take out the last game of the season where we played a third team, we would have had the best defence in the league. If I were to be critical, I would say that we probably did not score enough goals, obviously we scored enough to win the league but I would certainly have some fingernails left if we managed to score a second in some games when we only scraped a 1-0.

-Will you be hunting in the NT Sales this year?

I have only enough for one player so we have been looking around to make sure that the guy who comes in is of the calibre required. Maybe we need somebody to stick the ball in the back of the net a bit more often. Or somebody to provide the chances but if the player that we need is not out there then we will not just spend for the sake of it.

- Shortly before you lifted the Title, you splashed out on TM Diamond and as a result we saw the formation of ‘The Up and Comings’ B team. How important is a good youth set-up in this game?

I have really neglected the youths since I started and that has cost us, instead of bringing through reams of young lads, or selling cracking young players for massive profits to bring the first team on, I have relegated the YD to the backburner and only had two or three players good enough to play for us come through in the years we have been involved. That was a conscious decision as we have been trying to save money to buy players when we need them and cut down running costs. It is only recently that we have started to bring up the level of our YD and hopefully it will begin to reap rewards in coming seasons.

-Do you currently have any youths who you feel could make the step up to the seniors in the future?

Not really, we have James O’Hart , a decent keeper who is still blooming, and he could make it, still has a fair bit of bloom to go. Ethan Ryan could end up being a decent replacement for Matty too, he is a 17-18 who is blooming well for us.

- I can’t let you go without asking, Season 18... give us your predictions : )

Mayhem, but with Les having been prepping for it for so long, I cannot really see too far past him.

-Thanks for your time Hubbs and best of luck in Season 18