Of the 12 league tables carried on the results page of this paper's sports section yesterday only one - the First Division of our own National League - was led by a team that has failed to win a majority of its games.
Drogheda were beaten on Friday night of course, with the result that they are now tied on points with Galway United. Neither side, though, has exactly been waltzing in the direction of the Premier Division, with Martin Lawlor's team having won just 12 of their 26 league encounters while Don O'Riordan's side have only taken all three points from 11 of their 25.
With just about a quarter of the campaign remaining the pair are just four points clear of the pack and three clubs are within two wins of stealing one of the automatic promotion places. All of which has made for one of the most interesting First Division campaigns in years, but none of which seems to augur too well for whoever it is who eventually ends up making the leap up to the top flight over the summer months.
Last season's First Division champions, Waterford United, dropped points on just nine occasions in the then 27-match championship and while Bray were six points adrift in second place, they won only one game less than Tommy Lynch's side. This week, after Sligo's defeat of Bohemians on Saturday night, the pair lie on top of each other at the foot of the Premier Division table and while it's far from out of the question that one will scrape their way to the play-off place or better, it would take a brave man to back both of them to be playing at the same level next season.
Since their promotion last summer there have undoubtedly been changes for the better in the league they left behind. Longford Town, Home Farm-Everton and Drogheda United have all turned out stronger sides than they possessed 12 months ago. Galway United have clearly learned from their errors of last season and most of the rest of the clubs attempted to improve things, with varying degrees of success, by employing the age-old tactic of simply changing their manager.
In fact, the only other club involved in the battle for promotion last year not to have parted company with the man who ran their team then was Limerick and they finally got around to that a couple of weeks ago.
The departure of Dave Connell appears to have received a mixed reaction amongst some of the club's supporters, but the sacking, coming from a club which makes so much of its lofty social ideals, raised a few eyebrows within the game. After all, Limerick's promotion challenge was, while hardly thriving, still alive, and Dave Connell's side went terribly close to scoring a cup win over an in-form Dundalk. Moreover, even if the club were doing more poorly than they in fact are, then there would be some support for Connell when he claims that he was entitled to more time with a side that had only lost just over a dozen times during his 50 odd games in charge and which he had taken from the foot of the table to the promotion play-offs in far less than a year.
Still, as Tommy Lynch, who takes over from him, knows only too well, management is not a game whose participants are regular recipients of fair treatment and the nature of the First Division, in which one season's clowns repeatedly seem capable of being the following season's challengers, does have the apparent effect of raising the expectations of board members and supporters around the country.
It also continues to cast doubt on the quality of the competition in the division and while it's reasonable to believe that the likes of Drogheda, Longford and Cobh are all manifestly better sides that they were last year, the real test of how much progress is being made, as always, will come when next season starts and a couple of this year's crop are having to cope at the higher level.
The question remains, however, if the clubs that ran away with this league last season are finding the going so tough 12 months on, how much better can two far less convincing winners of promotion hope to be doing this time next year?
