I went to Mourneview Park on Thursday not as a Lisburn Distillery supporter but simply as a football fan bored stupid with weeks of having nothing to do. As a fervent fan of Irish League football, I must admit to being embarrassed by what unfolded in front of me.

FC Zestafoni are no great shakes. They’re not even an average team, but they waltzed their way through 90 minutes of what must rank as their easiest ever venture into European football.

Distillery were woeful and only got going once their Georgian opponents had taken their foot off the gas at five goals to the good, secure in the knowledge that their place in the next round was guaranteed with nearly three quarters of the tie still to play.

The Whites, of course, were hit by the absence of a number of key men and appeared to struggle amid the unfamiliarity of the excess amount of debutants in their line-up.

They were also down on their luck with a couple of the goals — Nicholas Gelashvili’s opener was the sort of attempt that goalkeeper Paul Murphy would deal with 99 times out of 100, while the first of Shota Grigalashvili’s brace was little more than a decent free-kick which took a nasty deflection off the defensive wall.

Fortunate (or, to use a more common term, ‘jammy’) goals are a common sight when local sides come up against continental opposition but, as another old saying goes, you make your own luck... and Distillery weren’t in Zestafoni’s half often enough to see if they could sneak a jammy goal of their own.

Indeed, there was one occasion when a long punt from the back found the Georgians’ centre-halves under absolutely no threat whatsoever but they still managed to look like Laurel and Hardy chasing after a balloon and there was a feeling that, if only the Whites had the fitness to press their opponents further up the pitch, they might actually have been in with a shout.

Zestafoni’s other three goals came as a result of sharp, intricate passing and clever off-the-ball movement — exactly what you would expect of full-time footballers and something which Distillery, nowhere near match-fit as they begin their preparations for the domestic campaign, simply couldn’t contend with.

I pen these notes not as a means of having a dig at Distillery or new boss Jimmy Brown but because I’m growing ever more exasperated at how Irish League clubs — both individually and collectively — fail to help themselves on the European stage and are often their own worst enemy.

We’re usually at a setback because of our players’ part-time status and that, realistically, is not something we can adjust but we need to act fast or we’ll slide further and further down UEFA’s Coefficient rankings, where we currently sit 47th out of 53.

At the top end of the scale, you have England, who earn four places apiece for the Champions’ League and Europa League.

Making up the rest of the top five are Spain, Italy, Germany and France and, while nobody is seriously suggesting that our own local sides should harbour ambitions similar to residents of the game’s multi-million pound estates, it surely isn’t asking too much for us to at least reach the standards hit by some of the nations which rank above us such as Latvia, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Macedonia and, most annoyingly, Liechtenstein, who don’t even have their own league.

Coefficients are determined by the performance of each national association’s clubs in the last five seasons with two points awarded for each Euro win and one point for each draw.

The total figure is then divided by the amount of participating teams from that country and that figure is halved again should the aforementioned points be secured in the competition’s qualifying rounds.

So far this year, for example, two defeats for our two competing teams equals zero points (ha, try dividing and halving THAT, UEFA!).

Last summer, we were leapfrogged by Wales (!) and came embarrassingly close to falling behind the mighty Faroe Islands in the standings - saved only by Linfield’s draw with Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions’ League - but Llanelli’s midweek win over Motherwell will pull Wales further ahead of Northern Ireland unless any of our representatives can win at least one of their scheduled ties.

As things stand, our one Champions’ League and three Europa League places are safe enough — at least until UEFA opt to strip us of a few of them in a bid to cut down on the amount of qualifying matches for each tournament.

That is not an unlikely scenario given that, as of this season, they’ve had to squeeze in an extra qualifying round for the Champions’ League consisting solely of teams from Montenegro, Andorra, Malta and San Marino - the bottom four in the Coefficient rankings.

We’re not far away from slipping down there ourselves especially if, as expected, representatives from Montonegro (who are ranked so low as a consequence of being a new nation rather than being rubbish at football) pick up a few results.

Maybe it’s the sentimentalist (emphasis on mentalist) in me, but I honestly believe that Irish League teams are better than our European results suggest.

There is no sure-fire way to combat the pertinent issue of our players’ fitness, although a switch to summer football could have its plus points, but the question which then arises is whether clubs would be keen for such a wholesale change purely to benefit and accommodate our European qualifiers.

I cannot speak for the clubs but my own personal opinion is yes.

Clubs strive year on year to improve their own standing within the domestic game, so why shouldn’t we act together to improve our collective position on the continent?

Our teams’ fitness and sharpness levels would be dramatically improved by the time Euro competitions come around and, though that’s no guarantee of success, it would at least improve our chances of being at the right end of the pitch where we could perhaps bag a few jammy goals of our own.

Irish League teams have sprung a few sporadic surprises here and there over the years and I can’t help but wonder how more consistent we would be if we started giving ourselves half a chance when it comes to fitness.

Just look at the League of Ireland — they’re ranked 30th and their teams were seeded for this summer’s draws, thus handing them a chance of drawing one of the weaker nations (ie us).

You don’t have to be full-time professionals to skip past a round or two in Europe, you just need to be properly prepared and sufficiently fit to give your opponents a game.

Once we’ve addressed that perhaps we can begin looking into the issue of how continental players are ALWAYS taller than our own ones — probably the most baffling and bizarre mental block which Irish League sides often struggle to overcome once they come face to face (or face to midriff) with their counterparts.