WHEN he was appointed St Mirren manager in June 2010, Danny Lennon's first act was to phone a friend.

Those back-to-back promotions at Cowdenbeath had been masterminded whilst studying for his Uefa pro licence so who should he contact for a bit of advice than his coaching course instructor Gordon Strachan?

It's good to talk, so they say, and just perhaps that chat came full circle last week when the 45-year-old, after nine months out of football, took a call from SFA chief executive Stewart Regan to ask him if he fancied the chance to replace Billy Stark as coach of the Scotland Under-21 side. Now, assuming all goes well in Buk, Hungary, on March 26, and with the SFA's pursuit of a performance director, Strachan and Lennon's conversations will centre on topics like whether Ryan Gauld and Lewis Macleod are best accommodated in the Under-21s or the full team.

"When I accepted the job at St Mirren, one of the first things I did was contact Gordon for advice," said Lennon. "I met him through the Pro Licence when he came to speak to us. He was absolutely fantastic. He was out in America at the time but he answered my call to tell me he was on the golf course with his wife and he would give me a call back which he did. It's a mark of how humble he is. He was on the phone for about an hour and it was invaluable advice. I'll never forget that."

Lennon, who famously gave Raith Rovers a lead in Munich's Olympiastadion, made a handful of appearances for the Northern Ireland B team late on in his career, but that was always a flag of convenience compared to his first love, Scotland. Having been passed over in trials for Scotland Schoolboys as a teenager, he knows his father Eddie, who passed away when Danny was just 20, would be proud if he could see him now.

"I remember as a young boy with my dad and my uncle he would always take us to the Scotland v England games on the terracing," said Lennon. "It's one of the fond memories I have of having my father with me - we were at the Celtic End when Richard Gough had that big looping header in 1985 and it was absolute fantastic. It was the first time I had ever seen my dad go ballistic.

"I went to Raith Rovers in 1994 and obviously Jimmy Nicholl had his connections with Northern Ireland," he added. "At that stage of my career I was competing with quality players and a Scotland cap for me wasn't going to be a possibility, although you are always hoping. But there is nothing quite like representing the country of your birth. I got in the back door to play for Northern Ireland. But this is for real. It's an immensely proud day. I'd known from last week and it was difficult to keep it quiet."

This homespun product of Whitburn is occasionally lampooned for a lack of eloquence but he is fluent when it comes to the nuts and bolts of churning out young footballers. The likes of Kyle Naughton and Danny Grainger first came to prominence whilst he was at Gretna, Darren McGregor - now of Rangers - emerged at Cowdenbeath, while players such as Kenny McLean, John McGinn, Liam Kelly and others besides thrived in Paisley, contributing to a period which harvested a League Cup win and the club's highest league finish for years. That spell was brought to a sudden end when his contract wasn't renewed last summer, but Lennon is correct to feel vindicated by the legacy he has left for that club, even if his successors haven't been quite so successful.

"Part of my remit when I was offered the St Mirren job was to bring through kids into the first team," he said. "It was to bridge the gap between youth football and the first team and I managed to do that."

He is only just back from Tenerife but typically he already has some ideas up his sleeve. "I'll be speaking with Gordon when he returns next week and getting his ideas for how the transition goes," said Lennon, who recently rejected the chance to join Sligo Rovers. "I've identified numerous players, most capped but quite a few who haven't been. I'm looking forward to going out there, getting as many one-to-one chats with them as I can and speaking with their managers to see what their current form is and sifting through lots of DVDs."