The dream up at Belfield Park, as it has been since their much praised and copied scholarship scheme got fully up and running more than a decade ago, is that some day they can assemble enough talent to mount a serious challenge for the title.
All too often the reality has been that the club has had to scrap its way out of relegation trouble, but every season it seems, even if they are not directly involved, the students manage to have their say in the championship race.
Yesterday they dented Cork City's hopes. Next Monday, laughed manager Theo Dunne afterwards, "We'll do Dave Barry a favour when we play St Patrick's".
After this game Barry will certainly be looking for some kind of payback, although some in the UCD camp might argue that the manner in which they allowed the southerners back into a game which might have been over a quarter of the way through already constitutes something approaching a gesture of goodwill.
With City missing both Declan Daly and Derek Coughlan from their back four, the Dubliners were quick to exploit the uncertainty amongst the replacements, tearing into a two-goal lead within 16 minutes and having the opportunities to put the contest far further out of their visitors' reach.
Later, having defended so deeply as to invite their opponents back into the proceedings, they found themselves back on level terms and in need of a winner again. Even then they showed they were in generous mood, when Mick O'Byrne headed wide of an open goal in injury time following some edge-of-the-area daftness by Noel Mooney.
"The fact is that we came from two down and they could have won it with the last kick of the game," said Barry, "and really, in those circumstances you have to be happy with the draw.
"We created a lot of chances, though," he went on to admit, "and having dominated the game pretty much from the 16th minute to the 93rd maybe we could have gone on and won it."
They could have all right, but three points would have been unduly harsh on a home side who visibly shocked the City players with their determination to contest every ball in every area of the pitch through most of the opening half.
For much of it they at least held their own, and it was only when they began, rather prematurely, to drop back in numbers and give City time and space in which to build up that they began to look second best.
Given how shaky City's defence had seemed for the two goals - Aidan Lynch got a touch unchallenged to O'Byrne's corner for the first, and Ciaran Martyn punished Mooney's headed clearance from outside his area with a wonderfully struck lob two minutes later - attack would have appeared to have been the best form of defence. But then the pace was, perhaps, just a little too much to keep up through the entire contest.
From the time the second goal went in, though, Cork showed themselves willing to roll their sleeves up and get stuck in.
There were flashes, but little more, of the superb passing game that fuelled their challenge through the opening third of the season. Kelvin Flanagan's 26th minute goal, a low drive from 20 yards that went in off the foot of the post, for instance, came after a sweeping build-up involving Ollie Cahill, Patsy Freyne and Pat Morley.
UCD: Ryan; McDonnell, Delaney, Lynch, Mahon; McLoughlin, Kavanagh, Martyn, Dunne; O'Byrne, Fitzpatrick. Subs: Bennis for Dunne (half-time), Brett for McLoughlin (70 mins), Kilmurray for Fitzpatrick (90 mins).
CORK CITY: Mooney; O'Donoghue, Hill, Cronin, Barry-Murphy; Flanagan, Freyne, Herrick, Cahill; Morley, Dobbs.
Referee: G Perry (Dublin).
