It's not often that you find Dermot Keely struggling for words but in the immediate aftermath of last week's UEFA Cup defeat by Brondby at Tolka Park the normally jovial Dubliner was finding it to put a brave face on what had been a tough night for one of Ireland's most ambitious clubs.

A year ago Shelbourne took themselves seriously enough to suggest that they might be worthy of admission to the "Atlantic League" then being talked about by clubs from the likes of Scotland, the Netherlands and Portugal.

It always seemed a rather fanciful idea that clubs like Ajax, Celtic and Benfica, frustrated by the restrictions of playing much smaller and often uncompetitive teams locally, would be interested in playing one from Ireland - particularly given the notorious largesse of our television companies. In the two games against Brondby it was exposed as the folly that it, like the league idea itself, really was.

Keely had little trouble identifying the difference between the two sides when pressed about it. "They," he said, "are in a position to pay a million pounds for a player if they really want to, we're still a long way of reaching that point." Brondby, in fact, like their neighbours and bitter rivals FC Copenhagen (FCK), operate on an entirely different level to anything the eircom- sponsored league possesses here.

Walking from one end to the other of their magnificent training and youth development complex on the outskirts of the Danish capital is not, for a start, something you want to do in the lashing rain as the journalists who accompanied Shelbourne three weeks ago discovered on the day before the game.

Then there is the brand new 26,000 (soon to be 31,000) seat stadium which the club has built by redeveloping its old ground in stages over the past couple of years. It was meant to cost £25 million but ended up running over budget by £5 million, hence the delay in putting in the last of the seats and adding a few other final touches. The club, after all, is determined to live within its means.

At a lunch thrown by the host club the day before the game in Copenhagen, Brondby and Shelbourne compared their respective finances and found, to nobody's surprise, that there simply was no comparison.

The Danish side's shirt sponsors contribute more than 10 times as much as Shelbourne's and the figures in other areas of their respective revenue generation were on similarly lob-sided ratios.

In such circumstances it would be insulting to the abilities of those managing and playing for the club's first team to assume that a side from this country could seriously compete with them.

And the truth is that Shelbourne didn't. The refereeing may indeed have been very poor in the away leg but the turning point in that game and in the tie as a whole was Shelbourne's poor defending and Brondby's ruthless punishment of it that led to the home side's early goal.

From that point on the Dubliners were attempting to get something out of a game in which the locals were under no pressure whatsoever. Keely's men saw a lot of the ball and played a lot of the game in the Brondby half but the Danes looked happy enough to allow the match to unfold that way. In the second half they underlined their superiority with a second goal that might well not have been the end of it.

By the final whistle, talk of Shelbourne turning the tie around was no more than that and the second leg served only to highlight just how far we must travel if we are to seriously trouble teams like Aage Hareide's.

Still, there were positive things to take from the European games of the past month or so. The Danish league went professional 23 years ago and the fact is that ours is only doing so now.

With the exception of the extent to which Brondby and FCK dominate the league there, the way in which they have developed their game should be an inspiration to those who argue that the future for the league here can be bright.

So, too, should the performances by Bohemians against Levadia Maardu and Halmstads, particularly in Dublin where some of the football produced by the home team was as good as any played in Europe by an Irish side during the past two decades.

Similarly, though, the difference in quality between their Estonian and Swedish opposition was vast and the fact that Halmstads always looked capable of scoring goals against Pete Mahon's side was a symptom of their rather comfortable superiority.

Sweden and Denmark, however, are 19th and 21st in UEFA's ranking table for club competitions and the leading Swedish sides operate on a similar financial level to the Danes, so it would be foolish to expect too much.

Longford's strong displays against Litex, though a side from 28th-ranked Bulgaria, were encouraging, not least because Bulgarian performances in European competition have been improving much more quickly than our own in recent seasons. The Republic started this season is 38th place having moved out of the 40s on the basis of last year's showings. And our repeatedly disappointing showings in the Inter-Toto Cup - this time Cork City went out to Latvia's Liepaja - are hard to worry about until the season here is shifted.

And the National League's standing may improve again slightly on the basis of Longford's home draw and Bohemians's win and draw against Levadia although the fact that all were in qualifying rounds has the effect of halving the ranking points gained. The table, though, is based on performances over five years and so hopeless were our clubs' showings prior to last year that even modestly improved results will be enough to continue our progress for the next four years.

What this year should have taught us, however, is that while our clubs are continuing to learn to walk on the European stage, they are still some way off propelling themselves forward with any more noticeable momentum.