NATIONAL LEAGUEStephen Kenny may never have made a secret of his ambition to make a serious impression in football management but his insistence, after Sunday's win at Shelbourne had clinched the championship for Bohemians, on talking about the club's prospects in Europe said much about the reshaped priorities within the league's leading clubs.
It's less than a decade since Felix Healy described his Derry team's European encounter with the then unknown Maribor as a reward for all their hard work and, after the first leg went poorly for Derry, a few days away for the players to enjoy. A couple of years before that Maribor had been languishing in the third division of the old Yugoslavia league but not long afterwards the Slovenians were in the group stages of the Champions League.
These days it's hard to imagine anybody here dismissing either of the European competitions as a day out for the players. A fortuitous draw can be worth €500,000 to clubs while even the limited successes of Bohemians a couple of seasons ago, when the club put Aberdeen out of UEFA Cup and then gave Kaiserslautern some uncomfortable moments over two legs, did a considerable amount for the credibility of the game here.
Since then the country's two leading clubs, Bohemians and Shelbourne, have gone almost completely full-time and the timing of the domestic season has become much more favourable to those preparing to play European games in early or mid July. Neither factor seemed to do Shelbourne much good last summer but the hope is that both they and Bohemians will fare better this time around.
Progressing a round or two and hoping to go out with at least a moderate pay day is all very well but ultimately the ambition must be to get a team into the group stages of the Champions League and that is what Kenny has hinted that he would be aiming for. Reasonably enough he adds that he must have financial backing to enable him to compete. Striking the balance between providing what he needs and guarding against landing the club back in financial difficulties is clearly going to be management's greatest test.
Bohemians will be seeded in the first qualifying round of next season's competition which is an obvious advantage. The seeding should help to ensure they reach the second round but after that some luck is going to be required.
What really puts our standing in European football in perspective, however, is the fact only three of the 16 winners from the second round, a stage of the competition Eircom League sides struggle to reach, survived the final qualifying round when, last season, giants like Manchester United, Bayern Munich and Internazionale entered the fray.
Both Bohemians and Shelbourne would benefit, of course, from competing regularly in the competitions as Brondby and Copenhagen from Denmark, Norway's Rosenborg and Sparta from the Czech Republic have in the past and the money generated could enable them to perpetuate their position back at home. With that in mind it will be interesting to see what clubs like Shamrock Rovers, St Patrick's Athletic and Cork City manage to come up with over the close season in an effort to prevent Bohemians extending the lead they appear to have stolen over their rivals during this campaign.
Two of the three are heavily involved in the development of their stadium facilities and the increased urgency in pumping additional resources into the playing side of the business will not be entirely welcome, but all seem likely to return for the new season with increased wage bills and new ideas on how they might squeeze more out of supposedly part-time players.
So far, in what is still a fairly short career in management, Kenny has made a habit of setting ambitious targets for his clubs and then meeting them all. This time he has set the bar high and it may be that he comes to reflect that winning his first league title was the easy bit.
