AS he vocally patrolled Kenilworth Road's technical area on Tuesday night, Dave Byrne was continuing to live the dream - although he has taken a round-about route to get there.

After more than a year of leading Town's youth revolution, Byrne got promoted to assistant manager, under Maurice Malpas, and now eyes being the main man at the County Ground one day.

For the moment though he is more than happy to continue learning his trade under someone with a wealth of experience in the coaching circles as his career takes a different path to the one he initially envisaged.

He said: "I had 17 years as a pro but I decided to go down a different route. I went down the coach education route and it took 10 years to get my coaching badges and my coach education badges.

"I went out and delivered all the coach education classes for the FA.

"It was always my ambition to get into full time coaching. But if it did not come about it would have made no difference to me because I enjoyed working with the FA and I enjoyed working with the counties.

"I was a League tutor for a couple of years and so doing the mentoring process for the coaches was something I enjoyed.

"I enjoyed working at Plymouth college as well, where I taught on the public services doing the fitness work for joining the army."

Byrne was handed his first chance back in the professional game when Paul Sturrock brought him to the County Ground as Head of Youth more than a year ago now and he insists he still feels he owes the club a lot.

He said: "My real ambition was to get back full time, in what capacity it never really crossed my mind. Primarily I would have said it was the youth job that really really appealed to me. I could have gone to QPR in the summer for a lot more money than I was on here. I could also probably go to Plymouth but for me loyalty is a big thing in football.

"Swindon gave me my chance and I have loved it here.

"It feels like my club and hopefully I will be here for a lot longer. Who knows maybe one day I will be the manager of Swindon Town."

Town's assistant manager got the chance to manage a team for the first team when Paul Sturrock quit for Plymouth and with, a reasonable record in his caretaker capacity, he insists he got the taste.

He said: "Stick comes with the territory as manager, you get that at a youth team level. There is no difference just there is a lot more doing it but that is part of the job.

"You have to be quite thick skinned but you can't please everyone.

"Even our six-match unbeaten run still got punters out there not happy and there is not much you can do about that."