So, it's official then. Romance and the cup have gone their separate ways. Irrevocable differences, it seems. They may see each other again from time to time, but as of the weekend just past nobody should continue to consider them an item.
From the time the second round draw was made before Christmas, of course, there hadn't appeared to be a huge potential for any lumps in throats when the results came in. It's still a bit sad, though, that something as mundane as either Kilkenny's win at Galway or Portmarnock's 3-0 defeat of Rockmount could end up being the biggest shock.
Not that loyal National League fans will be complaining. Some of the runs put together by intermediate clubs over the years have meant considerable humiliation for followers of clubs like Finn Harps, Derry City and Dundalk. But to get a first round in which there was so little to get worked up about does still slightly defeat the purpose of the competition.
In the build-up to the weekend there was some talk that Dublin Bus, complete with a double decker full of former National League players, might prove some sort of match for Shamrock Rovers, but it was a rather fanciful notion and, as it turned out, Damien Richardson's side coasted through a one-sided game during which the Leinster Senior League side had one big chance - and missed it.
Finn Harps, being cheered on no doubt by representatives of the Revenue Commissioners, were equally comfortable at Whitehall; Derry City barely had to break sweat at Frank Cox Park and Youghal gave UCD a slight scare but nothing more. Hardly the stuff of legends.
You get the picture. And probably the most disappointing aspect of the entire round was the ease with which Premier Division clubs saw off the league's lower flight.
Monagahan's 2-0 loss at Shelbourne was respectable given the obvious strength of Dermot Keely's squad. Much the same could be said of Pat Devlin's panel after the number of experienced players he has brought in recent months, but there was little doubt after Friday night's game that Rovers boss Tommy Cassidy was surprised by the gap between the two sides.
The very fact that Bray and Longford have done so well after coming up this season had tended to suggest that the leading teams in the lower division were making significant progress.
Sligo, of course, may miss out on promotion, but at the moment it is far from an unrealistic target for them. What Friday's game highlighted is that, at a time when Cassidy is trying to bed down the club's youth structures, promotion would mean the traditional array of tough choices having to be made.
Basically these boil down to option A: give the young/local players that brought you up the chance to play at the higher level; or option B: Fill the team with older pros in the hope that they'll justify the expense by keeping you up.
A couple of days before the visit to the Carlisle Grounds you'd have put Cassidy firmly in the A camp. He talked enthusiastically about the young locals who are doing well in the under-21 side and the hope that, with time, a healthy proportion of them can graduate to the senior team.
Roughly half an hour after the final whistle, however, the northerner was still looking shellshocked by the scale of his side's defeat. He admitted that at half time he could do little more in the dressing-room than impress upon his players that they were going back out there to salvage some pride. The thought, he added, that it might end up running into double figures, occurred to him more than once.
Nobody asked, but it's a fair bet that had Cassidy discovered out of the blue on the way back home that his club was to suddenly be elevated to the Premier Division as of this coming week, he'd have been on to Joe McGrath asking where it is he gets all those players.
They, of course, are potentially the story of the next round with Kilkenny having been handed a tricky looking trip to Cherry Orchard. In the circumstances, McGrath could be forgiven for hoping that the romance continues to stay firmly out of the cup's way. Well, at least until the quarter-finals.
