WHEN THEY played against St Patrick's Athletic at Richmond Park in the league last year, Cork City did their bit to fuel the already growing doubts over the home side's title credentials when Denis Behan grabbed an equaliser three minutes from time.

On Sunday evening it looked as though they had staged a far more dramatic comeback when John O'Flynn came off the bench to score twice and, it seemed briefly, earn another draw for Cork. This time, though, St Patrick's Athletic showed the sort of character they will have to consistently show over the summer if they are capitalise on what has been another strong start to the season.

Less than a third of the way into the campaign it's premature to say Keith Fahey's late winner will prove one of this season's defining moments, but it keeps the Dubliners on course to assume something like the commanding position they threw away last summer and left Cork needing them to be just as wasteful again this time around.

Reflecting afterwards on comparisons between this season and last, St Patrick's manager John McDonnell avoided claiming anything more extravagant than that his side need only avoid a repeat of the sort of midsummer slump suffered last season to be a part of the final shake-up.

On the evidence of his side's early form, you imagine they'll manage that much, but then it's easy to forget just how well the Inchicore outfit performed in the opening round of games 12 months ago. Eight wins and two draws yielded 26 points, and displays like the 4-0 defeat of Sligo, the swift demolition of Bray and the harder but, in its own way, equally impressive defeat of Drogheda, convinced many they had what it would take to lift the title.

McDonnell believes the scale of his side's lead and subsequent loss of form have become a little exaggerated in the retelling but he readily concedes the wheels came off for a couple of months.

The way he sees it, though, if the club start and finish the campaign as well as they did last time things simply can't go as badly in between again. If the team can live up to the target, they will take beating to the title.

So far so good. A win against UCD this weekend will leave them with a point more than they took from their first round of games in 2007 a week before they complete the opening cycle with a visit to United Park.

Though their own strike rate declined as well, their problems last year primarily involved a loss of confidence at the back, where injuries and the loss of form by key players led to them conceding more goals during the middle third of the season than in the other 22 games.

Over the winter they did much to strengthen this part of the team, adding quality and depth despite the loss of Darragh Maguire and Colm Foley. It then took time to find the best combination of the newly assembled talents, as shown by the chaotic performance against Glentoran, but moving Joe O'Cearuill to right back and Dave Partridge to the centre helped spark a dramatic improvement.

On Sunday they conceded as many goals as they had in the previous seven games but with Partridge, O'Cearuill and Jamie Harris all out injured and Damien Lynch limping off with a hamstring problem less than half an hour in, McDonnell had considerable cause for satisfaction. Things are unlikely to get any worse at the back during the weeks ahead, and his side still managed to beat one of their main pre-season title rivals.

After scoring two, Fahey pointed not only to the list of injured defenders but the ongoing absence of Joseph Ndo as evidence there is better to come from the side.

Whether the former Cameroon international ends up making a significant contribution to the campaign remains to be seen but in the way Drogheda did last year, St Patrick's appear to be coping well with their various troubles so far. They continue to look short-handed up front, where a couple of injuries could prove costly, but with Harris back in light training and other defenders not expected to be far behind, it is hard to imagine they would again manage to take just 13 points from the middle portion of their championship programme.

Cork City are 11 points adrift after Sunday's defeat, and a sustained loss of form by the Dubliners already looks to be the Southerners' only hope of being a part of the title shake-up come November.

Even then, however, they are not going to overtake everyone in between without becoming much more consistent.

Cork manager Alan Mathews suggested in the wake of their second successive defeat that all they can do is get their heads down and concentrate on taking something from their next game.

The concern is, though, that City's only three wins to date have come against clubs in the bottom four, and with tricky-looking encounters against Sligo Rovers (at home) and Bohemians (away) to come over the next two weeks they need to display an ability to step things up and put away better opposition.

Anything less than a win this Friday and a draw the following week, and it's hard to see why St Patrick's Athletic's form through the middle third of the campaign would be of much concern to them any more.