Early story follows familiar plot lines

Although it's far from clear yet which club will win this season's championship, after the first of three series of matches in the National League Premier Division were completed on Sunday, there were as few surprises in the table as in any of the major leagues in Europe.

In Italy, Spain and England, the theory is consistently put forward that it is the cash from television that has taken the romance out of club football, with the rich clubs getting richer and the poor falling ever further behind. However, the eircom-sponsored National League is the next best thing to a TV cash free zone, yet it remains one of the most rigidly predictable competitions on the face of the footballing planet.

There may be more individual upsets in the National League, but if you had shown this week's table - with perhaps just the positions of Bohemians and St Patrick's Athletic reversed - to supporters of any club back in August as a prediction of how the teams will finish next May, they might not have agreed with the order, but they would not have been terribly outraged.

Already Cork and Shelbourne are in the top three, with Liam Buckley's side on the way to joining them after a poor start. Last season's promoted sides are in the bottom three along with Waterford, who staged an almost miraculous escape from relegation last season.

In between are the likes of UCD and Derry City, sides that few reckon will have a say when it comes to deciding the key placings six months from now.

In fact, the greatest talking point of the season may already be over. Finn Harps's start to the campaign was a major surprise to most observers and it cost their manager his job, but now the same group of players seem to be recovering steadily.

The only other point worthy of attention to date is the strong early showing of Bohemians, which even manager Roddy Collins insists he is surprised by. Given the number of changes he made to the panel over the summer months he's not the only one.

It's very hard, though, to see them maintain the momentum over the coming two-thirds of the campaign. Against Sligo on Sunday they were particularly unconvincing at the back. Going into the game, they had the tightest defence in the country. Now they're second on that score to Shelbourne and if they slip further down the list they are likely to lose ground.

In essence, though, we seem, even in a league where our biggest clubs turn over around £500,000 a year, to be at least as hierarchical as our English counterparts - if not actually more so.

Of course there'll be some surprises over the coming months. Waterford may again forget how to concede goals or Cork how to score them. But the chances are that nothing too drastic will change between now and next May, so God help us if Sky was suddenly to start waving decent sized cheques at the league here. There would scarcely be any point at all in going out to play the games.