Dundalk may delay it this evening at Oriel Park by beating UCD, but it would be something of a miracle, in terms of other results going their way, if domestic football's most successful club of the past two decades are to avoid slipping into the first division.

There were some rocky times during the fifties (four times they had to be re-elected) but in the Irish game the mild embarrassment of having to have one's league status rubber stamped is nothing compared to playing one season in the wilderness of the first division.

Asked about his side's chances of surviving the drop, manager Jim McLaughlin describes the situation as more or less hopeless, adding that "there's not much point in living in fantasy land."

His chairman is no more optimistic about the situation with Phil Flynn admitting that "the numbers are against us now and it's impossible to see us getting out of it but the mood amongst the players is still defiant; they won't be giving anybody an easy time over the two games." Confirmation of the club's relegation would complete an astonishing turnabout for Dundalk who only four years ago won their ninth league title. Since then it's been pretty much all downhill for the Louthmen who narrowly, and controversially, avoided the drop two seasons ago after fielding a Linfield player who, they claimed, was playing for them as an amateur.

Then, as now, the team's inability to score enough goals was the most glaring problem on the pitch but it is the club's wider difficulties, primarily its financial troubles, that have really been at the heart of what has been a speedy decline.

Strict limitations on what could be spent have severely restricted McLaughlin and the ongoing injury problems suffered by their best player, Brian Byrne, have been an added blow.

The manager, though, while pointing to other examples of the bad luck he has encountered in recent months, is philosophical about the situation, saying: "In life you can moan about that sort of thing if you want to but it doesn't do anybody any good, so in the end it's best just to get on with it."

Flynn, who points to the fact the club is at least in a somewhat better financial position now than it was at the start of the season, agrees and expresses the simple hope that the club can come out of the current crisis in a stronger position. For the small but loyal band of supporters who will witness this season's last home game against a full strength UCD, however, it appears that, in the short term anyway, there is still a good deal more pain to come.