On Soccer: Not long after the initial outpouring of joy that accompanied Shelbourne's victory at Tolka Park on Friday night had subsided Pat Fenlon and a number of his senior players spoke with dignity and intelligence of how much it meant to emerge successfully from a season that had been disrupted persistently by problems off the pitch.

Derry supporters may console themselves with the thought that when cup competitions and Europe are taken into account their club has done better than their Dublin rivals. However, it's hard to imagine even Derry diehards could contest Owen Heary's claim on Friday that he and his team-mates had shown the character of real champions over the course of this campaign.

That Fenlon, and his backroom team and the players, defied the distractions of not just the financial uncertainty that has dogged the club but also the disputes between it and the league to clinch the title marks this as the most impressive championship win by any side in recent years.

That they had to overcome more hurdles than just their schedule of games, however, made it yet another year in which the credibility of the senior club game here took a battering. Those who run things have to bear some responsibility. During the decade and a half I have been covering the league the rules or, more precisely, how poorly the rulebook is constructed, have been a source of trouble. Almost every year amendments have been made to address shortcomings and at least one attempt to radically overhaul the document has been made.

Despite all of this we encountered one situation (the collapse of Dublin City) which was in no adequate way provided for within the rules, one (Bohemians versus Shelbourne game in which Jason McGuinness played while suspended) in which the relevant rules were out of step with the approach taken in major international competitions, and one (Seán Hargan's suspension) in which the league and FAI disciplinary commission between them failed to follow the required procedures.

Without wading through the detail of the disputes it is worth acknowledging Shelbourne did effectively end up on the losing side in each instance. Their players, motivated no doubt by a growing sense that the world was against them, fought back on the field where they coped magnificently with everything thrown at them.

On Friday night, the likes of Heary, Ollie Cahill and Stuart Byrne reflected with pride on what had gone on and what they had achieved. Not everyone was being so measured in their assessment of the situation, however. A few minutes earlier Ollie Byrne had told journalists he would be pursuing the matter of the league's handling of the Hargan suspension "for the good of football". Heaven help us if Byrne has become the arbiter of that.

Most, if not all, of the leading figures at the league's other 20 clubs would have reacted a little more magnanimously to their side winning the championship but nobody around Tolka Park on Friday expressed any great surprise Byrne had used the occasion to stoke the fires again. The comments rounded off what has been another poor year for the Shelbourne chief executive. The terms on which he sold Tolka Park for property development a few seasons back look still poorer after another year of the property boom. Highly respected members of the club's board departed after a dispute born out of the shortage of money and he (as well as everyone else with a stake in the game) has had to endure another of his court appearances.

Perhaps most critically, though, his club won the title with a squad it could not afford due to its failure to generate sufficient sponsorship revenue or gate receipts required to meet the wage bill. That is neither fair on rival clubs nor remotely healthy for the league as a whole.

Shelbourne is not the only club to lose money but the amounts there are exceptionally large. Shortfalls have been met in part by drawing down money on the sale of the ground and if the amounts advanced are anything to go by then the club is losing upwards of €750,000 a year. The approach of meeting current expenditure requirements through the use of capital resources only serves to compound the original folly of agreeing a price for the sale before the club's future had been securely mapped out. Byrne has placed his hopes in a move to Santry Stadium that few outside the club have any faith in. He is pursuing the move against a backdrop of unrest amongst his manager and players prompted by his inability to pay wages.

After angry denials of the scale of the problem, and repeated threats of legal action when questions were put to him regarding the situation recently by The Irish Times, he told another newspaper at the weekend he was disappointed by the lack of loyalty displayed by the players to the club when they considered strike action earlier in the season. That they won the game in question after deciding to play it was, as Cahill pointed out on Friday night, an early indication of the immense team spirit that has developed amongst the squad.

Ultimately, for them this title success represents hard won vindication. It says a great deal that Byrne appears to believe a belated victory over the league in relation to the Hargan affair would represent the same for him.