Cork City's hopes for the last third of the season may have taken a serious jolt on Sunday when they slipped out of the FAI Cup against Shamrock Rovers in painful circumstances - an own goal. However, it was hard to leave Turner's Cross without being seriously impressed by all that has been achieved by the club over the past couple of years.
There remain, of course, several key members of the squad that won the Cup back in 1998 but, after a couple of seasons in which little enough was done to address the problem of the side's age profile, the speed with which Liam Murphy has tackled the issue was evident at the weekend.
The presence of so many emerging players - Neal Horgan, Damien O'Rourke, Alan Carey, Alan Bennett and Conor O'Grady - in Sunday's starting line-up makes it difficult to recognise the tough and vastly experienced Cork side of the late 1990s. At 23, Noel Hartigan was only the sixth youngest player to start the match for City and with Killian Lordan on the bench as well as Stephen O'Flynn pushing hard behind the scenes, the striker could yet be regarded as something of a veteran by the end of the season.
Behind the scenes much has changed with most of the youngsters engaged in a third-level course run by Murphy in which they train with their manager for a couple of hours a day and emerge at the end of the programme with their first and second level coaching badges.
Of the squad's senior members James Mulligan, Michael Devine and Ollie Cahill are full-time professionals while almost everyone associated with the first-team squad is living in or around the city.
The facilities have improved too, with the club having worked well with the Munster FA to transform Turner's Cross over the past few years.
The issue of a training ground wasn't quite resolved as might have been expected by the three-way tie up with Leicester City and Mayfield but there are new, privately run, all-weather facilities in Bishopstown and the hope is that a proposed FAI regional facility for the city would provide the solution to the club's long-term needs.
Terry Dunne, who stepped down in the summer after five years as club chairman while remaining a director, insists the club has the sort of structures in place that can provide a solid basis for its future development.
"On the playing side Liam has done a tremendous job," he says, "but there has been a lot happening and next month the lights are due to go into Turner's Cross which will represent another significant step forward."
The spadework on bringing more young players through, he says, was started by Murphy and Dave Barry several years ago but having started to yield benefits at senior level things will only improve on that front now that close to 60 players are getting high-quality training from qualified senior coaches.
Things are looking even rosier just now because of a considerably improved financial situation over last season when bad weather and the foot-and-mouth crisis combined to disrupt the club's fixture list.
"On top of that," says Dunne, "you had a situation last year where we played Shelbourne, Rovers and Bohemians twice each in Dublin where as this time they come here twice - over the course of a season that makes a fairly significant difference too."
Improved cash flow and better crowds have enabled the club to sign more of the younger players on longer-term contracts. This approach is aimed at preventing a repeat of situations that arose with players like Brian Barry Murphy and Joe Gamble, both of whom went to England on Bosmans.
Quite who among the current crop will follow the pair remains to be seen but there is a strong feeling around the club if the bulk of them can be held onto for a couple of seasons then there is very strong side in the making.
Not strong enough for last Sunday's challenge as yet, perhaps, but not so far off it as their proximity to the top of the Eircom league table confirms.
emalone@irish-times.ie
