And if perhaps now isn't the time to be heading into the many and varying controversies, any year that one club goes bust, that two of the biggest clubs in the country have serious and very public financial problems, that there's a potential legal battle for points after another ineligible player issue, that top players are refusing to play, and that the home of Irish soccer in many ways is sold off, must go down as a turbulent one. Topsy-turvy doesn't quite do it justice.

Credit Shels in all this.

With winding-up notices loitering and at least two occasions during the year where the players and management simply weren't getting paid wages, they've knuckled down and been professional. And when for about 10 minutes on Friday night Derry City were out in front, they didn't panic, knocked a couple of goals in without too much fuss and in the end, the best team over the year won the league.

If anything won the league for Shelbourne, it was consistently beating the teams who should be beaten and doing it in style. They might have taken only five points from 18 in their games with Derry and Cork but they dropped very few points to the likes of Waterford, UCD, Bray Wanderers or Sligo Rovers. And while they were putting six goals up on UCD and five past Waterford, their challengers were taking 1-0s and 2-0s. In a league of inches where winning comes down to goal difference, every one of their 60 goals were of the important kind in the end . . . that the nearest were Derry with 46 says a lot about Shelbourne's efficiency. That Jason Byrne again finished at the top of the scoring charts with 15 league goals wasn't exactly a hindrance and the form of Joseph Ndo, Ollie Cahill and Stuart Byrne dragged them through at different times.

So what of the others?

Derry City finished with an identical win-draw-loss record to Shelbourne and still it's heartbreak all the way, losing two titles on the last day seems a tad careless. And they've lost a fine young manager in Stephen Kenny. Cork City just haven't had anything go their way all season.

George O'Callaghan and Liam Kearney have both gone; John O'Flynn's missed more games than he's played again; Danny Murphy and Neale Fenn are off and there are others out of contract . . . including a very much in-form Roy O'Donovan); Brian Lennox has sold up and there's a new consortium taking over. Eleven draws in the league . . . seven of them scoreless . . . pretty much sum up where it went wrong results-wise. Drogheda drew 10 themselves and still finished third.

All this upheaval is hardly likely to end here either.

Derry, Bohs and Sligo have all changed managers in the last while and there's a real possibility of Cork and Shelbourne doing likewise. Players will be leaving the top clubs due to money issues, even if the new standard player contract will help. And there's the whole new ball game of the format change next season.

The next few months could be interesting, in ways both good and bad.