Cork City fans will surely continue to wonder, when they look back on this year's table, just how it was that their team could not take just one point from three games against Dundalk, for that would have been enough to deliver the title back to Turner's Cross. Their counterparts, of course, will scarcely care.

Final tables, they say, don't lie and if John Caulfield and co can point to the fact they took more points than their rivals in games against the division's 10 other teams, then the point, they know only too well, is fatally undermined by their three defeats against the champions.

One came after a burst water mains en route from Cork to Dundalk had delayed the southerners to the extent that they had to dispense with a proper pre-match warm up and play, almost straight from the team bus upon arrival. Sure enough, the hosts won easily.

City's one home game had been far tighter but a late Brian Gartland goal had decided that game in favour of Stephen Kenny's men.

Dundalk, though, then blew the opportunity to wrap things up before Cork came calling again on the very last night of the season, by which time City had so much momentum behind them it seemed doubtful whether a flood of biblical proportions could have halted their progress to the venue.

More intriguing was whether the locals could halt them in their tracks once they were actually there.

The answer, in the end, was emphatic enough. On Oriel Park’s biggest night in many years, Dundalk kept their nerve and regained the title.

Stephen O’Donnell produced what was, perhaps, the best story of the night by opening the scoring on his first start since an injury early in the campaign had threatened to end his career.

Stephen Kenny’s tale of redemption wasn’t lost on many there that night either, though. Gartland added a second and the club’s first title triumph in 19 years was completed under the guidance of the Dubliner, who saw his Derry team lose the league in similar circumstances in Cork in 2005, and who, more recently, got less than a season to deliver success at Shamrock Rovers.

Here, he was hailed as a hero with the home supporters’ joy at the final whistle heightened, it seemed, by the sense that it was in some way at their rivals’ expense.

It was not, in truth, the greatest of games but it was a decent final chapter to one of Irish football’s more compelling recent stories.