Just Minutes after this Harp Lager FAI Cup final replay ended the great chasm that exists between winners and losers on big occasions was all too apparent around Dalymount Park.
As Shelbourne players and their manager mingled happily with the media, only Roddy Collins came out initially to speak for the defeated. There, smiling and relaxed, was Paul Doolin who had just completed the fifth double of his remarkable career. Somewhere out of sight was Derek Swan whose own fine contribution to the game down the years has yet to earn him a winner's medal of any description.
Goaded from across a crowded corridor by Ollie Byrne, Collins was more gracious in defeat than the Shelbourne official seemed capable of being in victory. But then the time for big talk was past now and some stark facts simply had to be acknowledged.
"They're the best team in the country," conceded the Bohemians boss without hesitation. "Teams that win doubles always are and there's no shame in having lost to them out there this evening." That much was certainly true, as was Collins's point that having finished up his first season at the club congratulating his players on having beaten Cobh to stay in the Premier Division he had, in the context of the big picture, a good deal to be satisfied with last night.
The match was fast and occasionally furious and it produced just one goal, six minutes before the break, when a sweeping Shelbourne move down the left was finished from close range by Pat Fenlon. Despite Bohemians dominating the first quarter and shading the first half, that solitary strike was plenty for Dermot Keely's men to build a winning performance around.
At the time the goal seemed like all that was required to turn an exciting game into a genuinely compelling one, but for that Bohemians would have required just a little more up front where, once again, they looked decisively second best.
Playing just behind Ray Kelly in the Bohemians' attack, Garreth O'Connor again posed the biggest threat to Steve Williams's goal early on, but it was to his striking partner that the best Bohemians chance fell after just 16 minutes.
Stephen Caffrey sent the striker, who had scored in every other round of the competition, clean through on Williams. The goalkeeper did well but indecision more than the Welshman prevented the former Athlone Town man from scoring.
The spurned opportunity had been the best of perhaps three clear-cut chances for Roddy Collins's side to do what they had not managed previously against the league champions this season - to score from play.
With their forwards seeing a good deal more of the ball over the closing stages of the half, Shelbourne twice went close before taking the lead, Stephen Geoghegan and then Richie Baker sending in crosses from the right both of which were worthy of a decent finish.
When the goal came, it was the result of a more elaborate move, with Dessie Baker and James Keddy providing the speed and forward momentum, Geoghegan the vital touch. The 29-year-old striker, one of many Shelbourne players to shine on the night, attempted to turn Shaun Maher and have a crack himself. When he lost his footing the ball ran across the six-yard box and Fenlon, arriving on the scene at speed, slipped it beyond Michael Dempsey.
Not long after the turnaround Collins began to make the expected tactical switches, with Paul Byrne, perhaps for the last time, departing to make way for Derek Swan and O'Connor returning to the flanks. Glen Crowe then came on for Kelly, but no matter. Shelbourne, as Keely was to comment afterwards, have "a bit of grit" about them these days. Defending "from the front", just as their manager had hoped, they held very firm indeed through a hectic but slightly disappointing second period.
Only once could it be said that Keely's back four were let off the hook; Garreth O'Connor's cross from the right having opened them up completely with 12 minutes remaining. In the centre any one of Stephen Caffrey, Glen Crowe and Mark Dempsey might have turned it past Williams but none even managed to get a touch.
Sometimes it goes like that when your opposition's name is on, well . . . everything that matters really.
SHELBOURNE: Williams; Heary, Scully, McCarthy, D Geoghegan; R Baker, Doolin, Fenlon, Keddy; S Geoghegan, D Baker. Sub: Campbell for Doolin (90 mins).
BOHEMIANS: Dempsey; T O'Connor, Maher, John, Brunton; Byrne, Caffrey, Hunt, Dempsey; G O'Connor; Kelly. Subs: Swan for Byrne (51 mins), Crowe for Kelly (63 mins), Doyle for Brunton (87 mins).
Referee: J Stacey (Athlone).
