Well, there you have it. It may yet be some time before we can accurately assess the full impact of Friday's game at Tolka Park, but it seems, in terms of the match itself, we got all that it was reasonable to expect, while, in the context of the league as a whole, we have been left with one team in the driving seat even as we are about to turn the corner of the season's half-way point.

From a footballing point of view, it was probably a more one-sided affair than most neutrals would have expected. Nevertheless, it was an interesting contest and one which, with the exception of the most devoted of Shelbourne supporters, everyone would have conceded ended much as it should have.

Shelbourne's record over the past few weeks has been almost as good as that of the league leaders, but on Friday several of their key players had off nights. When you're playing teams of St Patrick's quality, winning without a central midfield is a tricky enough proposition.

More interestingly, Friday night, as we knew it would, represented as fair a marker as we have had in recent times of where our league stands just now. The game attracted 6,500 on Friday night and was generally well-received by those who stayed at home and watched it on television.

It had been perceived by the media, local and national newspapers as well as all levels of radio, as a major event and received from all the afore-mentioned as much promotion as could have been hoped for. Even Ollie Byrne remarked afterwards on how positive the advance coverage had been and that's something akin to Garda representatives stating publicly that perhaps a fair legislative balance between the pursuit of the guilty and the protection of the accused has, perhaps, been reached. Not exactly the sort of stuff that the innocent bystander gets used to hearing in a hurry.

Byrne contributed much to the size of the crowd through his promotion of the game and he may well have had a point afterwards when he suggested that its proximity to Christmas kept 1,000 or so spectators away. On the other hand, however, the mild weather almost certainly made up the difference for if Friday evening had been like Tuesday night in the capital we would surely not have seen nearly so many kids filing into the stands.

Overall then, a game between two of the league's most progressive clubs gave a glimpse of where the league should, as a whole, should be headed. If it can produce on a regular basis that sort of quality, that level of atmosphere for the live audience and that sort of simple spectacle for those at home, then everybody concerned may be able to look to the future with a fair degree of confidence.

But Friday's was just the third game of those to be televised live this season and neither of the other two other could have won many fans for the game here. Now RTE and the league must look at the possibilities for the rest of the season's live matches and attempt to strike a balance between the entitlements that every club feel it has to some sort of decent exposure and the commercial realities of the product.

As it stands it would seem obvious that several clubs, either because of the standard of football they play or the setting in which they play it, would present a considerable risk. Outside of Dublin, and the live games must surely be spread around a bit, Cork would appear to have the best claim to hosting such an occasion in the near future, while Finn Harps if they combined the sort of display they produced in Richmond Park recently with the sort of crowds they have been attracting for floodlit games recently, might just manage to present a more rounded case.

Whoever is next, the reality is simple. The National League's stock has been low with the majority of the football-supporting population here for some time and television can play a key part in altering that situation, so it is essential that clubs, with a long track record of battling for short-term advantage over each other take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

If they can look at what it was that ensured that everything came together for this game and build on it, then the significance of Friday's meeting between Shelbourne and St Patrick's Athletic may be remembered for quite some time.

If not then it may simply be recalled as the evening on which Pat Dolan's side began to set the pace in earnest for the 1997/98 title. But then Shelbourne, despite their defeat, Cork City and a couple of the others will surely still insist that it's early days, or even early doors.