Season of mellow fruitfulness

So that's that then. With the last of the domestic honours sorted out on Saturday night in Dalymount Park, we can just about put our feet up until, well, until the middle of next month when the leading teams get back into training for European competition. Then, if the nightmare of last summer is repeated, an alarming proportion of our senior clubs will start to signal that all is not well in the coffers department.

Given that that is the note on which the season just ended got under way, it actually hasn't been such a bad season at all. We were treated to exciting finales in all three competitions.

St Patrick's Athletic emerged as league champions in nail-biting fashion on the very last night. Cork City, whose long-term prosperity is so vital to the league, completed their return from the brink of extinction by winning the FAI Cup and Sligo Rovers, threatening for so long to make a really major breakthrough, took the League Cup, enough, one hopes, to sustain the hopes of their supporters that the bigger time is just around the corner.

The big losers in all three cases were Shelbourne, who deserved so much more than they got for their often magnificent efforts in all three competitions. True, they are in Europe again, which Damien Richardson has often said is the true yardstick of progress made by our best clubs, but having come so close to upsetting Kilmarnock last summer, the UEFA Cup is likely to prove a more hostile place for a club with such big ambitions.

Taken together, the team's failure to finish off the Scots and their inability to equalise against Dundalk a few weeks ago may well have cost them something approaching £500,000. When it is considered that pitifully few clubs here even turn over that much in a year, it is easy to see how our best outfits could be transformed by even moderate achievement in European competition.

This summer St Patrick's Athletic have the opportunity to make the breakthrough in the Champions' Cup qualifiers and, having assembled a side capable of winning the league so quickly, Pat Dolan may just be the man to halt the humiliating decline in our UEFA ranking. If his, and the other sides involved each won just one round it would represent a major step forward for the game here.

Facilities have been improved in some way at many grounds over the past year. Seats have gone in at Limerick, Terryland Park is moving closer to completion and Bray Wanderers are continuing with their redevelopment of the Carlisle Grounds. All five of Dublin's Premier Division clubs plan major developments over the next few years, while tenant clubs such as Waterford, Derry and Cork have all been improving their positions at the grounds they occupy.

Conditions are still extremely basic at most of our venues, however, as was highlighted by the staging of the cup final at Dalymount, which was followed by numerous complaints about toilet facilities and a certain amount of derision regarding the fact that the public address system didn't even work last Sunday.

Increasing the number of full-time professionals playing the game is a separate issue, but it's not unrelated. If we want players returning from England to avoid the sort of motivational crises which Damien Richardson talks about Tony Sheridan currently undergoing, then we need to have a far more impressive set-up into which to welcome them back.

Until we reach the stage where players can be certain that their careers can benefit far more from playing in the National League than by disappearing into the English reserve leagues, progress on issues relating to the standard of play will be slow.

One positive aspect is the impact that Brian Kerr has had on the international underage scene. His promotion to his current position has, in itself, been a boost for the league. Add to this both Kerr's and Ian Evans's belief in involving players on their merits, whatever the currency in their wage packet, and the long-term implications for the league as a whole are even more positive.

Ultimately, though, it is only the people who run the league who can really transform it. We'll see this Friday what the sub-committee set up to consider league structures and other possible changes have recommended. Although rumours that they favour a return to some form of split part of the way through the season are not encouraging, if they can identify ways in which this league can begin to realise its genuinely enormous potential then that alone will be enough to mark the season out as a successful one.