In much the same way that St Patrick's Athletic have been quick over the past couple of seasons to offer advice to their fellow clubs on how things should be done, Dundalk officials may, over the coming years, find a slot for themselves on the National League's equivalent of the rubber chicken circuit.

For them, however, the topic of the post-nosh chat requested will be something along the lines of "domestic footballing success - an A to Z of how not to handle it".

Now if you were to believe all the talk you hear these days from the St Patrick's and Cork City camps about their core support, you could be forgiven for thinking that it would take something approaching the sport going slap-bang out of fashion across western Europe before this season's two top clubs could ever find themselves in trouble again.

The country's most successful club of the past quarter of a century, though, showed last Thursday night how even the big boys can slip. Just four years after they last won the championship, they've been relegated to what their directors, when the club was formed in the late 1880s, must have been confident that they would only ever read about.

Sooner or later, of course, one of the big clubs was bound to blow it and go down and despite their continued success on the pitch, Dundalk's difficulties in every other aspect of its existence has, for some time now, marked it out as the favourite to take the plunge first. What will be interesting to see is just how they cope.

The temptation might be for the club to spend its way back up, although there are problems with this strategy. For one thing, the First Division is a notoriously difficult division to spend your way out of, while the club currently appears to be in the hands of hardened financial realists.

The fact is that Phil Flynn, Enda McGuill, Nobby Quinn and co could have attempted to write a few more rubbery cheques and sweet-talk a few more bank managers this season, but instead they have attempted to face up to the longer-term problems at Oriel Park and for that, whatever complaints the club's most loyal followers will feel they have, they should be applauded.

Nobody who hung around for what felt like a wake in the club's main bar after the defeat by UCD could have mistaken the mood of the assembled directors, officials, players or fans as one of optimism but, even with its terribly limited active support, there are things to be positive about at the club.

These include the plans for a new stand to be built with the help of Lottery funding, the fact that the club's debts have been slightly reduced over the past season and, most encouragingly, the fact that, from a point in the early 1990s when there was scarcely a hint of local representation in the first team panel, close to half of the first team in any given game these days tends to be drawn from the town and its surroundings.

With more youngsters knocking on the door, all signs are that Dundalk has started to move in the right direction again. Which isn't to say that there isn't a long way for the club still to travel. A great deal of hope amongst the supporters is being invested in the proposal that a co-operative be established to take over the running of the club with every fan getting a genuine attempt to have an input.

The numbers being bandied about, 4,000 members seems to be the most widely mentioned figure, sounds high, but whatever the eventual number, the scheme has the potential to have a dramatic impact on the club's fortunes.

Even if it doesn't bounce straight back from last week's setback, it is hoped Dundalk will emerge as a sounder entity with a broader, more involved support base, that is far more firmly rooted in the local community.

If Dundalk can do that then the club will be in a position to teach some valuable lessons to everybody else in the game here, even the clubs who currently feel they'll never need it. As Cork and St Patrick's sweat over who will win the league next season, up at Oriel they know that that's the easy part. Not winning the league, now that's when things start to get a little bit tricky.