Emmet Malone on Irish soccer: It may have been expected during this transitional season for the Eircom League but the ease with which so many of leading clubs from the game's lower ranks were rolled over at the weekend poses something of a dilemma for the organisers of future FAI Cups.

Like the involvement of the league's leading clubs in the various UEFA competitions, the FAI Cup has provided a useful indication of how well the league is progressing. And when times have been bad the success of clubs like Ashtown Villa, Glenmore Celtic and, most of all, St Francis in 1990, has given the senior game's critics a big stick to beat it with.

Gradually, though, it was felt things were improving for the National League outfits. And the increasing rarity with which non-league sides beat league opponents in recent seasons provided evidence that things were moving in the right direction.

During the past weekend Limerick's Fairview Rangers, Irish Junior Cup champions and a club that possesses several players who look capable of playing regular league football, managed to spring one surprise, their 4-1 defeat of Dublin City was the result of the round.

The broader trend suggested by the second round results, however, is that even clubs like Rockmount and what is now Glenmore Dundrum, sides that have traditionally performed strongly at this level, are going to struggle due to the revised timing of the competition.

This, of course, is a somewhat exceptional year. With the shift in the national league season the second round of the cup was slotted in for late July, before the league campaign had gathered momentum, because of the desire to have the competition completed by its new regular final spot in the calendar - the October bank holiday weekend.

While the qualifiers from the junior cup had already been decided in the normal way - the semi-finalists from last season's competition - selecting the 16 intermediate sides in the middle of the summer posed a greater problem and so last year's entrants were simply invited to participate again.

One, Terenure CYM, declined the invitation, as they were unable even to field a team at this time of year. The rest patched things together as well as they could and played off for places in the second round.

Last week the full scale of the problems being experienced quickly became obvious as one manager after another listed off members of his squad who were not be available to play in the premier cup competition because they were on holidays. Then the full and part-time professionals of the big league sides cruelly exposed the lack of fitness of those who were still around over the weekend.

Next season things may not be quite so bad in the second round which, it is anticipated, will be played in June. But if the teams do manage to progress in the competition managers will quickly lose players, due to holidays, and competitive edge, due to the lack of competitive games between rounds.

The result is that while the devaluation of this year's opening round proper can be viewed as a one-off, subsequent rounds of the competition may regularly be affected adversely by being scheduled though the middle of the summer months.

A final decision on when next year's competition will be played will not be made until the Eircom league publishes its fixture list for the 2003 season. Before then there will be an opportunity for the other leagues to have a say in the shaping of the competition.

Timing, some people will point out, is not everything. Fairview still managed to defy the odds against a Dublin City side that should have been in far better shape than them.

And then there is the sad case of Shelbourne, whose Champions League qualifiers against Hibernians (Malta) would, under the old timetable, have come a month or so before the start of their season proper. Instead the games coincided with the start of the league and the Dubliners managed somehow, just days before they put eight past Rockmount, to become the first Irish side ever to go out to Maltese opposition.

Not quite the magic of the cup most of us had been hoping for.