IN THE wake of Dundalk’s pre season friendly defeat by a Celtic XI on Sunday, George O’Callaghan spoke with disarming honesty about the personal problems he has battled over the past few years before essentially concluding that his return to the League of Ireland constitutes a visit to the last chance saloon.

Around the country, though, there is a sense that the league as a whole must show strong signs of being able to sort itself out during the coming nine months if the enormous damage done to its credibility by last year’s financial crises is to be repaired over even the medium term.

The FAI has consistently argued that last season’s problems were part of a necessary “adjustment”, with Fran Gavin speaking at Friday’s launch of the new campaign about “short-term pain for long-term gain”. It’s a card the association can only really play once, though, particularly after insisting the clubs’ projections for this year have been closely scrutinised up at Abbotstown.

There was a marked effort on Friday to look on the bright side although that amounted to little more than trumpeting the fact that the prize fund for this year’s league will be up again. Morale within the clubs, on the other hand, like wages and expectations, is clearly down. What those running the game must hope now is that crowds and general interest don’t follow suit.

The pity of it all is that last year’s setbacks came after a period of years during which a great deal of forward momentum had been achieved.

On the field, the standard of play has risen dramatically during the past decade, a fact obvious enough to anybody who attends games on a regular basis but clearly evidenced for those who don’t by the steadily improving results achieved by the league’s representatives in Europe.

Teams, rather predictably, became significantly better because many more players were getting the opportunity to concentrate on earning their living from football. And clubs too, egged on with both carrot and stick by the FAI, sought to become more professional in the way they went about their business even if the results on this front were somewhat more mixed..

The problem was that, just as in the country at large, the increase in spending hugely outstripped the growth in revenues and so, by last year, we arrived at a situation where more than half of the clubs couldn’t even meet their wage bills through to the end of the season.

In the four months since, budgets have been slashed and large numbers of talented players have had to settle for a fraction of the pay they were due under the terms of their previous contracts.

Almost everybody has suffered to some extent, with last year’s double winners, Bohemians, obliged to let some players go and cut the salaries of those who were kept, while a growing number of First Division clubs struggle even to meet the criteria that would normally be applied to the term “semi-professional”.

Given the wider economic situation, it could be argued clubs simply managing to hold their own this year will be doing well. Continuing to make progress in terms of the development of facilities and the standard of play remains the real challenge.

The former looks a tall order for the country’s administrators, while the latter requires that what has come to be regarded as probably the league’s brightest ever generation of young managers really prove their worth, not least when it comes to keeping some of its best ever players motivated.

An attractive opening weekend programme that includes Bohemians’ visit to Dundalk and Galway’s to Richmond Park should help the season get off to a strong start, while the opening of the new Shamrock Rovers stadium in Tallaght is of much more lasting significance.

The ability of boards to balance the books and players to maintain the improved standards of recent seasons is critical to the prospects of this campaign being good enough to provide meaningful support for Gavin’s contention that 2008 was merely a necessary evil for a league in dire need of financial and structural reform.

Retaining the title has been tough for some time in this league and Bohemians, despite having been immensely impressive champions last year, may well find it as much of a challenge as any of their recent predecessors. A much closer title race would be no bad thing for the wider game, though.

On the European front, the participating clubs will do well to match what has been achieved in recent season, although changes to the structure of Uefa’s competitions should be of some benefit and, it is worth remembering, times are tough too in many of the countries whose representatives our clubs have tended to face in the early rounds.

Over the long term, success on the international stage is vital to the league’s hopes of convincing a generally sceptical public that it is on the right road. The short term priority, however, must be to show that clubs have successfully negotiated their way out of last year’s financial cul de sac.