In the spring of 2010, the sports section at The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi was a shambles.

Several staffers were solid and energetic, but the section was not well led and had become an afterthought.

Three sports editors had cycled through in the two years of the newspaper’s existence, and the section had ridiculous deadlines, modest ambitions and no vision.

That’s when Robert Mashburn stepped in.

Previously, Mashburn had spent eight months as a copy editor on the news side of The National, which had acquainted him with the unique journalism environment here in the capital of the UAE.

Previous to that, he had spent decades in sports journalism in the southeast of the U.S., including stretches as sports and Sunday editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. And that left him perfectly qualified to turn around a sports section being produced eight time zones east of the AJC.

In his first weeks as sports editor, he negotiated an 11 p.m. deadline for the section (“asking” seemed to be a major factor in the shift), and it became the last section off the floor, instead of one of the first.

Suddenly, the newspaper had “last night” scores from the English Premier League in it and the staff drove toward deadline every night, as a good section should, instead of everyone just shutting down and going home at 8.

The deadline shift was the turning point. The quality journalists on staff were invigorated by it; it was as if Mashburn gave the mostly young crew permission to do what they really wanted to do — quality deadline journalism. And they blossomed.

Mashburn also took on the tedious business of pruning back the section’s army of contributors, many of whom were overpaid for subpar work. It was addition by subtraction, in many cases, but he also brought on several high-quality correspondents and paid them fair (as opposed to excessive) sums.

He convinced management that the newspaper needed to cover the Formula One season from start to finish because the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix is part of the high-profile global series. Beginning with the first race of 2011, National staffer Gary Meenaghan has seen every F1 race contested, making him among the handful of journalists who travel everywhere with the tour.

Mashburn also carved out a place for the newspaper’s first full-time sports columnist and hired the American expat Chuck Culpepper, a man who is capable of brilliance on any given day and who now works for the new SportsonEarth site.

Mashburn also improved the tab-size section graphically, taking advantage of glorious color on the highest-grade newspaper stock imaginable. The front was stripped of body type and given over to one big story-telling photo, augmented with colorful refers, and the front began to pop.

He did all this while employing most of the best management techniques of the modern American newspaper editor. He led but did not push. He allowed the energetic to run. He was quick to praise and slow to condemn. He was fair and reasonable. He brought higher journalism standards to the section. He hired well. And he came in on time and under budget.

In short, he turned around a mess of a section and within a year had it up and purring.

During his tenure, the section sent two reporters to the 2010 World Cup, covered domestic soccer like it had never been covered before, got the glamorous F1 gig on track, and fought for Culpepper and ace photographer Mike Young to spend a week in Manny Pacquiao‘s training camp in the Philippines. Culpepper chased the globe-circling Volvo Ocean Race, which included a boat from Abu Dhabi. Two staffers were sent to the London 2012 Olympics and another reported on the Euro 2012 soccer tournament.

We bring all this up because today was Mashburn’s final day at The National. He is returning to Georgia this weekend and will become a project manager, next week, for an Atlanta-based firm which employs several former AJC journalists.

He will be missed, but not soon forgotten, and certainly remembered by those of us who saw, first-hand, the making of a quality sports section where none had been before.

Any section anywhere can be further improved and refined, and can adjust to new circumstances. Newspapering is always evolving.

But pulling the section out of the depths? That was done by Robert Mashburn, in an exotic place with a multi-ethnic staff.

Those who know him and perhaps worked with him, back in the States, may not be aware of what he accomplished here, on the other side of the world. But we suspect it compares with any of his successes anywhere.