Welcome as it was, the news over the past couple of days that Richie Foran had finally done enough to earn himself a spell with Don Givens' under-21 squad will not quite overcome the disappointment of league supporters here who felt that he was only one of a number of locally based players with a claim for a place in the panel.
That none was named in the original squad for this afternoon's game at Dalymount Park (kick-off 2.30) was certainly a disappointment, while Richie Baker's continued exclusion remains something of a mystery.
More damning in the long term for clubs here is that only one of Givens' panel outside of Foran - Sunderland's Michael Reddy - has ever played senior football in Ireland.
A number of people have lamented the lack of progress being made in terms of current league players making it into the squad. But given that Brian Kerr tends to rely almost exclusively on British club sides for his under-16 and under-18 squads, and nobody, one presumes, is accusing the former St Patrick's Athletic boss of being anti-National League, that is surely to miss the point.
The reality is that if clubs here can not hold on to the best 16-year-old prospects, and that if those who leave then have access to better facilities and well qualified coaches, the odds are stacked against local clubs being well represented at something like under-21 level.
The appointment of Billy Young as Givens' assistant here in Ireland also suggests that the system being employed is basically fair, or at the very least far more so than 10 years ago when Maurice Setters made little secret of his disinterest in potentially useful League of Ireland players.
Part of the problem has, in fact, been that, once a player who hasn't already been recruited by an English side is capped at some underage level by an Irish manager, he becomes a target.
Indeed, Kerr has previously lamented the fact that he sometimes feels as if he and others in similar positions are saving the scouts the effort of uncovering youngsters from outside the most established clubs by picking them for representative squads.
There are, of course, also fairly straightforward differences of opinion between different managers, a fact highlighted by Damien Delaney's swift elevation to Leicester City's first team after his move from Cork City.
It's only a matter of months since the youngster couldn't make Stephen Kenny's National League under-21 squad for the shelved game against Northern Ireland.
It hardly seems a coincidence that both Foran and Baker have recently returned from trial in England.
The reality is that, while our under-21 team doesn't quite have the mystique for English clubs of their own equivalent, if both were regulars for Givens it is hard to imagine that somebody would not part with the £100,000 or so required to bring each of them across the water.
It's embarrassingly little money given how much more they would change hands for if they were even Conference players. If, in five years time, we could look at an under-21 panel in which most players had started their professional careers in the league here, it will be a significant step forward for the game here.
The new UEFA regulations are likely to make this sort of goal much more achievable, but a great deal remains too for the clubs themselves to do.
IRELAND UNDER-21 TEAM: Delaney (Port Vale); Lynch (Leeds United), Gavin (Middlesbrough), O'Shea (Manchester United/Royal Antwerp), Clarke (Stoke City); Healy (Celtic), Quinn (Coventry City), O'Connor (Stoke City), Reid (Millwall); Sadlier (Millwall), George (Luton Town).
