NATIONAL LEAGUE: After a season that will probably be best remembered for the bitterness of its various disputes and in particular a registration row that is still far from being resolved, Dundalk's FAI Cup win at Tolka Park on Sunday finally managed to restore some unanimity to the game,  writes Emmet Malone.

During the build-up nobody outside of the town seemed to believe with any conviction that the club could win its ninth FAI Cup. By the time they'd done it and David Crawley was carting the trophy out of the man stand not even the dejected Bohemians players or officials questioned the fact that they had earned the win.

Crawley's subsequent prediction that the victory was a sign that the good times were returning to Oriel Park was met with little more than a round of polite nods from journalists who might have felt that this was not the best time to tease out the question of whether the Cup success or league failure carried the greater significance.

But the fact that club officials estimated the size of the crowd that turned out in Dundalk to welcome the side home at around 10,000 suggests Crawley is not alone in being upbeat.

Club chairman Des Denning certainly sees the future as looking fairly bright despite the failure to survive in the top flight. Though it will be tomorrow before the board sits down to discuss its options, he anticipates that both manager Martin Murray and almost of his players will be asked to stay on for next season's attempt to win promotion.

He is also fairly optimistic about the club's ability to continue attracting significant crowds (although he concedes that they will probably be down by half on this year's very healthy figures), to get started on building the new stand and to bring more young players through to the senior ranks where they will join a squad that is now predominantly from the locality. Sunday's hero, Garry Haylock, is likely to be offered a role within the youth development structures that will enable the club to keep the striker on through the leaner times ahead.

Denning estimates that the Cup run was worth anything up to €75,000 to Dundalk and that winning the competition means that it will finish the season more or less free from debt. More important to its long-term prospects is the emergence of so many young locals.

Players like Crawley, David Hoey and Chris Lawless all looked comfortably able to hold their own on Sunday and there is now close to being the making of an entire first team of them at Murray's disposal.

"You only have to look at the crowds we are attracting now, there's a whole new generation of supporters under the age of 20 who are getting interested," Denning says. "I've no doubt that that's because there are seven or eight young lads from the town playing for us now. That's had a dramatic effect on the way people view the whole club."

Dundalk has become a model of how the league and its clubs might progress. It commands strong - and growing - support from its locality, places an emphasis on the development of local talent and, after years of damage control, exudes a growing sense that it is moving forward.

But Denning remains perplexed that so much of what the club is attempting to do has been put at risk by a centrally-agreed policy that went a long way towards ensuring the club's relegation. When the decision to move to a 10-team premier division was made a couple of seasons back Dundalk's representatives at the time voted in favour. Now their successors are contemplating the loss of tens of thousands of euro and the prospect of having to gamble heavily on bouncing straight back up.

The fact that they finished 20 points clear of Galway in 11th place tends to suggest that they are more a premier than a first-division club. Both themselves and Longford, in fact, have shown just the sort of initiative that is required of clubs outside of Dublin if the league's top division is ever to become truly national again.

As it is, though, Longford may end up joining them in the first division and could, depending on Dublin City's fortunes in arbitration, be replaced by what would be an eighth club from the greater Dublin area.

A few years ago the league - which is essentially based on the clubs - seemed to be moving in the right direction. Targets for improvements at grounds around the country were set and a spate of building projects followed.

Why they then abandoned a policy that was essentially inclusive in favour of one based on arbitrary exclusion remains a mystery.

What looks clear, however, is that the real cost of the miscalculation is only now starting to become apparent. Just ask anyone at Oriel Park.

emalone@irish-times.ie