Those hoping the new Eircom-sponsored National League season would provide them with a fairy-tale or two haven't had to wait long to be disappointed.

Just eight weeks in and not only are the four big Dublin clubs occupying the top four positions in the table but the two clubs most widely tipped to go down lie 11th and 12th. It's early days, of course, but after a quick glance at yesterday's table you could be forgiven for thinking the season's as good as over already.

A few managers will, of course, complain this is all a bit premature. Nobody in the automatic relegation positions - least of all Longford's Stephen Kenny - is going to admit the game is up as we move into the last week of September, but the table is nevertheless another unwelcome indication of the increasing polarisation within our league.

Even in England, Bolton Wanderers can shock everybody with a remarkable early run that leaves them ahead of Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool after the first month and a half of competition.

Here, we have had some interesting results, Dundalk's 3-1 defeat of Bohemians last week and Bray's successive 5-1 wins after a generally disappointing start spring immediately to mind.

But, when you look at the table, the proximity of Shamrock Rovers to the very top is as close as there is to a surprise and even that is only because most observers have become hardened to the years of under-achievement that have accompanied the once-great club's nomadic wanderings about the capital.

To be fair, there have been some decided upsides to the first couple of months here, with the likes of St Patrick's, Bohemians and Shelbourne playing football of as high a quality as we have seen in recent years, even if the European performances were a disappointment. It provides further evidence that the evolution of our leading clubs into full-time professional outfits is indeed having the desired effect.

Predictably, the managers of less successful sides with the most optimism regarding their own sides are those in a position to follow suit to some extent. While Bray's Pat Devlin remains a consistent critic of the decision to reduce the league to 12 teams, his concerns are clearly less about his own side's chances of survival than about the health of the league in general.

Devlin has invested heavily over the past couple of seasons in experienced players capable of establishing the side a comfortable notch above the relegation struggle.

The fact that he could come up with the money to bring Paul Keegan to Wanderers when Bohemians were also in pursuit of the Dubliner provided new and rather startling evidence of how the club is progressing.

And, within a matter of weeks says Devlin, a small core of his full-timers will become the latest group to adopt what might be recognised internationally as the day-to-day schedule of the professional footballer.

Longford hope to follow the same course next season, by which time it is intended the spending on their ground and training facilities will have eased off. When Stephen Kenny says now that he feels the club will have a "very, very good side" in a year's time, it's hard to argue, for experience suggests he and just about everybody else at the club these days have a knack of delivering what they promise.

More immediately, there have been promising signs down at Cork where Liam Murphy has continued to integrate younger bodies into a vastly experienced first-team set up.

There is a sense Murphy has the capacity to rebuild the City team from the resources available to him. It is difficult to overstate just how great a contribution that would be to the league as a whole.

For the moment, though, the big Dublin clubs are making all the running and already it is hard to see those four failing to produce this season's champions.

It has the potential to be nightmarishly boring and yet if Friday night's derby in Inchicore is anything to go by we might end up remembering this campaign as one where great strides forward were made on the pitch, while, in the form of Dublin's increased dominance in the top flight, a huge step back was made off it.