LEAGUE OF IRELAND PREMIER DIVISION: Emmet Maloneon how what promised to be a close title race turned into a procession for the Dalymount club
IT WAS expected to be the closest title race in years. Instead, Bohemians' 2-1 victory at United Park last night has brought what seems an almost impossibly early end to one of the most one-sided campaigns ever seen in this country.
It is all the more startling given Bohemians had a new manager and a handful of new players as the season got under way.
It scarcely seemed surprising that they stuttered over the early weeks while St Patrick's were threatening to run away with things.
Having repeatedly had problems with their form at Dalymount Park in recent years, Pat Fenlon's men looked a little shaky at home again early on, taking just five points from their opening four games and losing their second outing in Phibsboro to St Patrick's when a long-range strike by Keith Fahey handed the visitors what looked like a potentially important victory for his side.
Since they settled, though, Bohemians' form on their home turf has been outstanding, with 10 straight wins ahead of last night's trip to Drogheda providing much of the impetus for their title charge.
As it turned out, of course, they were to prove almost as formidable on the road and they have beaten almost all of their rivals away this season, with only Derry still to succumb to the Dubliners ahead of the two sides' third encounter of the campaign, a game scheduled to take place at Dalymount next week.
The bare statistics of their success story are truly remarkable. Having been beaten just that once, they went into last night's game on an 11-match winning streak. They have scored significantly more goals than any of their rivals and conceded far, far fewer.
The endless tinkering with the league's format down the years makes like-for-like comparisons tricky but unless they ease up dramatically over the coming weeks this Bohemians team should easily eclipse the most comfortable of title winners of the 33-round championship era, Shelbourne, who won in 2000 with a margin of 11 points over second-placed Cork City.
As much as the undoubted collective talent of the squad, the basis for the scale of the success has been the way in which the team have, under Fenlon's guidance, applied themselves to the task over the months.
True, Brian Murphy has looked the best goalkeeper in the league while various others - Owen Heary, Ken Oman and Killian Brennan - are among those who have also probably been the best in their positions.
But it has been the manner in which the group collectively coped with the injury problems that afflicted prominent defenders, the way players in all areas of the side have chipped in with important goals and the sheer will to win consistently evident over the campaign that have, in the end, carried them over the line.
Oddly, two of the Irish game's most prolific strikers of the last decade or so have not produced goals at the rate that might have been expected but then they haven't really needed to.
Brennan had scored 10 before last night, while the ability of players like Neale Fenn and, more recently, Mindaugas Kalonas, to bring others into the attack enabled less likely figures to contribute to the tally as well.
The runaway nature of the title win makes it difficult in a way to identify individual games as having been of critical importance or serving as turning points. But the first really big win, a 2-1 away defeat of Drogheda in which Brennan scored twice, came back in April, and the 2-1 success over Cork at home in May combined with a 1-0 victory in Inchicore the same month provided real evidence that they would the side to beat.
The more recent 1-0 wins in Cork and Sligo showed they could win even when they weren't at their best, and the long, long runs without conceding goals must have intimidated opponents even before they set foot on the pitch.
In the end, teams from the top and bottom of the table found it almost equally difficult to live with them. Against the bottom four, they took 28 points from a possible 30, scoring 20 goals and conceding two. But then again, against their closest four rivals they had won six and drawn two, scoring 11 times and conceding just twice again, since that early defeat by St Patrick's.
A fourth title for Fenlon since he gave up playing confirms his place at the head of an exciting generating of young managers.
The Dubliner inherited a good squad of players when he arrived at Dalymount but he made his mark too by buying and selling well, tinkering with the pecking order and, as he always seems to, getting the best out of what he had available to him.
And it is quite a group, with even late arrivals like Gary Deegan, Anto Murphy and Kalonas managing to make an impression.
The club has an important court decision coming up in relation to the sale of its ground.
There have also been criticisms of the rate at which it is spending its money. Its wage bill was not by any means the league's biggest this year, however, so it cannot be accused of simply buying this, the club's 10th title.
And Bohemians might still lift the cup to make this the third double-winning season in their history.
And worryingly for their rivals, many of this squad are young, many are improving and almost all are likely to be around for next year's title defence.
