With 15 minutes of their last league game to go on Friday night Shelbourne goalkeeper Alan Gough found himself sitting in front of his goal at Oriel Park staring into space. Dundalk had just scored their second goal of the night and all around him it was beginning to dawn on people that the script had been chucked out the window.

"I sat there for a while," he says "and I saw Mick Neville staring back at me. And I knew then, just like he knew then, that it wasn't going to happen, the league was gone, that we'd blown it in our very last game . . . and it was devastating."

Five days later, at a light training session in Tolka and it's clear that the disappointment still hangs heavy over Gough and his team-mates as they try to prepare for this weekend's Harp Lager FAI Cup final at Dalymount Park. Like everyone at the club, it seems, the 27-year-old reckoned that only a league title would fully prove the team's worth to onlookers. While helping the club to the championship was meant to make a point it would, Gough had hoped, also make a point to some of those who had doubted him over the last decade or so.

"I went to England and spent five years over there only to be told that I wasn't good enough and then I came back to this club and was told, over there, a few seats up in the stand, by Pat Byrne and Ollie Byrne that I wasn't good enough to play here either. That was difficult to take," he says.

Still, his determination to make a name for himself quickly began to pay dividends at Galway United where a marvellous season was rewarded with an offer from the club that had turned him down. Things, it appeared were finally beginning to turn in his favour.

And so it has seemed since. Consistently rated as one of the top three goalkeepers in the league over the past five years, he has not finished lower than third place with either of his clubs since returning to Ireland.

That's a record that would feel an awful lot better to him if there was actually a championship medal win in there to reflect on. But when people tell Gough, as they have been telling him in large numbers these past few days, not to worry because you have to learn to lose a title before you win one, he tried to point out that he doesn't reckon there's too much more he has to master about that particular aspect of the business.

"What hurts so much about this time is that we went so many matches unbeaten, played badly in the first half on Friday but still had the destiny of the title in our own half at the break and still we're not league champions. When you ask why, it's difficult to figure out what the answer is."

The fact now, he concedes, however, is that having turned in a second half performance that was "nothing short of disgraceful" they must lift themselves up and do it all one more time.

"It's hard but we have to do it because success is expected at this club and rightfully so. People here are paid good money to go out there and do jobs and we have to go out and do them. We wanted to win the league and we didn't so now we have to win the cup."

That, he knows, won't be easy. "Cork," he recalls "went to Derry and won 1-0 which was a great result but we haven't exactly had it easy on the way to this final. We beat Limerick 4-1 and they're not a bad side, we had to beat Dundalk - and we all know about them - we beat St Patrick's over three games that were a terrific advertisement for the league and then we beat Finn Harps here after getting a draw up there."

All they need to do, then, is finish a job they've started soundly. Just about, when you think about it, exactly the same thing they had to do in Oriel Park at the end of last week.