FOR Denis Clarke and his Galway United side there can only realistically be one measure of success this season. For a club with the sort of financial difficulties that United find themselves in Premier Division status is essential.

Still, his team's arrival back home last night with the League Cup will go a long way towards dispersing the clouds that had gathered over Terryland Park of late.

Cork's manager, Dave Barry, said after yesterday's draw that his side had thrown the final away in the first 10 minutes of the game in Galway. Early on, though, it appeared that the visitors were keen to throw it right back at his team with some shakey defending causing repeated scares and quickly yielding the early goal.

It came after 13 minutes when United's goalkeeper Eddie Van Boxtel came strongly for Ollie Cahill's corner but failed to connect leaving Damien O'Connell behind him to head the ball unchallenged into the top right hand corner of the net.

It wasn't the last time that the Galway keeper was to look vulnerable during the opening half and seven minutes later when he parried a Cahill free from the same side the loose ball fell to John Caulfield who got under his shot and sent it flying over the crossbar.

Seconds later Van Boxtel did better when gathering in front of Caulfield but he was repeatedly put under pressure by his full backs' failure to control the runs of Cahill and, less frequently, Anthony Buckley, while in front of him O'Connell and Hill broke through the centre more than once.

Cork City lost the momentum in the second half and, with Mark Herrick outshining both Patsy Freyne and David Hill in midfield, Galway United began to break out of defence with speed causing, as they did in the first leg, quite a few problems of their own.

"We played Longford a couple of weeks ago and we couldn't break them down because they left 11 men behind the ball and we weren't good enough to cope with that," said Clark afterward. "But we knew today, especially when we saw the conditions, that it would be a match for putting the ball through and running on to it which is what we started to do well in the second half."

His side's cause, he felt, would be helped by the positional changes forced on his opposition number through injury and the inexperience of a couple of Cork's defenders and, as it turned out both factors were to contribute to his team's 69th minute goal.

Noel Hartigan, by now on the right hand side of a three man defence, was caught napping in possession by Jumbo Brennan as he tried to let the ball run behind. The former Shamrock Rovers striker passed quickly inside to Fergal Coleman who picked his spot wonderfully before shooting past three defenders and Noel Mooney from the edge of the area.

To their credit Cork then did what seemed like the impossible by upping the pace once again and few of the almost 5,000 crowd made for the exits until the very end. With Martin Lawlor now paying close attention to O'Connell, however, and Caulfield having been replaced by Barry himself they lost their bite up front against a team who everyone conceded deserved the silverware over the two games but who know that now, over the weeks ahead they must start to dig for gold.

. Pat Dolan, currently the Chief Executive at Richmond Park, became the favourite to fill the managerial vacancy left by Brian Kerr's departure from St Patrick's Athletic following the resignation of assistant manager, Liam Buckley, on Tuesday evenings.

The club will announce Kerr's successor at a noon press conference today and, given the rumoured preference for an internal appointment, Buckley's departure would appear to leave Dolan as the front runner although his central role in the overall development of the club might actually count against him.

Buckley made no secret of his desire to succeed Kerr, who he had assisted for more than three seasons and said yesterday that he was disappointed to discover on Monday night, when he went to talk to club officials about his prospects of being promoted, that the job was already filled.

"The whole thing happened so quickly that I'm a bit shocked by it all," he said yesterday. "I've had some very good times with St Patrick's Athletic over the past few years and for it all to be over in the space of 24 hours is terrible.

"In the circumstances, though, I had made a contribution during Brian's time and deserved to be considered for his job now so when that didn't happen I felt it was best for me to go my own way," he added.