On the face of it, this evening's game at Oriel Park presents Shelbourne defender Pat Scully with a bit of a dilemma. A key player for the Drumcondra-based club over the past nine months, Scully has been equally effective at both ends, making his presence felt around his own box and generally causing havoc in the other team's penalty area. It is the sort of balancing act that is tricky to maintain when the pressure is on.

Damien Richardson and his team have insisted all week that they will go to Dundalk tonight looking to win their final game and Scully could play a vital part in their success. More than ever, though, you would think the thought of getting caught on the break might inhibit a man who could yet suffer the ignominy of being held responsible for the goal that cost Shelbourne the championship. Cushy number, isn't it, being Stephen Geoghegan and just having to worry about scoring goals.

Scully, though, remains upbeat. So much so that to listen to him you would suspect they've had to weigh him down at work this week in order to keep his feet down on the ground. This, he announces, has been the best season of his career. He has played better, enjoyed it more, never been happier with his lot. And over the next nine days it could all still get a whole lot better.

Virtually from his first match in a Shelbourne shirt, Scully has made his mark. In his first season, he insists, however, that he never entirely recovered from the disruption that came with the move home at short notice.

He missed the pre-season build-up, had to repeatedly commute between Huddersfield and Dublin in order to tie up loose ends and took some time to catch up on his new team-mates in terms of fitness while also coming to terms with his new surroundings.

His second season back, though, even he is prepared to admit has been something to be proud of. Such was the strength of his partnership with Tony McCarthy that Mick Neville, undoubtedly still good enough to waltz into most premier division teams, has been forced to sit the bulk of the season out on the bench.

Together the pair have put to bed the reputation for softness at the back which had gone hand in hand with admiring talk of their skill going forward. Scully has played his part in the latter department, too, reaching double figures in the scoring charts.

This has, for the most part, been credited to his tendency to push forward for set pieces which, of course, is largely true. But to look at Scully in action around the box, one suspects he is one of those defenders who could cope with being asked to play up front without too much bother.

At Bohemians a couple of weeks ago, he displayed the reactions of a real striker to react faster than any defender and drive the loose ball home after Michael Dempsey had saved his original attempt on goal. It wasn't the first time this season that his speed and agility had counted for as much as his height and strength around the opposition's box.

Tonight, he hopes, it will be the same. "Tony and me go up for all the corners and free kicks and I wouldn't see that changing," he says chirpily. "Obviously we'll see how things are going - if things are tight with 20 minutes, half an hour to go, then we might be a bit more careful but all through the week we've been talking about this and we've decided that it's playing a certain way that's got us this far and so we'd be crazy to change it now."

Lifting morale in time for the cup final won't, he knows, be easy to do if this evening doesn't go well but, he points out, there isn't a lot of point in thinking that way just yet. "We're not even thinking about the cup, we're not even thinking about what happens in Kilkenny, all we've been thinking about all week is going to Dundalk and playing the way we can, because if we do that we know we can win the game and then nothing else that happens will matter to us."