1LOUGHNANE AND ALL THAT There's been an almost worrying lack of boot camp stories coming out of Galway over the winter. What suffering there has been in the ritual fashioning of men from hurlers hasn't yet managed to seep its way into the public consciousness. Maybe the man with everybody's favourite maniac smile has softened in his middle- to old-age.

Seems unlikely, somehow. Mellowed-out maturity wasn't quite what Galway saw written on the tin when they went looking for Ger Loughnane and certainly isn't what they're expecting from him. That goes for the rest of us, too. Peace and love to all men, obviously, but won't we all be disappointed if the year ends without Loughnane having gotten up some nose or other?

Galway's ranking as third favourites for the All Ireland is almost exclusively down to the Loughnane factor. The fascination will be in seeing what kind of team he produces. Many will be the voices who'll say that the game has changed since his best Clare days but even if it has, that's not to say he can't change it back. Or, for that matter, move it forward.

With the click of every year, you find more and more folk lining up to opine how dull the hurling world is these days. You feel at times, though, that it's an overly harsh way of looking at it all. It's not that it's been dull, it's just that it's been peace-time.

Well, Loughnane is nothing if not a war-time general. Flak jackets at the ready, boys.

2DERVAL AND THOSE HURDLES Hands up here. When there was that bit of a kerfuffie over whether or not Derval O'Rourke should have beaten Henry Sheffiin to RTE's end of year thingy last month, how many people had a rashers what they were talking about? How many knew whether her medals in the World Indoors and the European Championships were serious, pin-it-to-the-wall achievements or the equivalent of soft All Irelands won in the absence of her sport's best names? Perhaps a collective New Year's resolution would be for all of us to do her a favour and go away and learn about what it is she does before pronouncing on her greatness or otherwise at it.

This year gives us the chance. On the Tuesday and (hopefully) Wednesday of final week of August, half the world away in Osaka, Japan, she'll run in the World Athletics Championships. There'll be no room for saying that the best of the best weren't in opposition because they'll all be there. O'Rourke starts the year ranked eighth in the world so if she continues her improvement, a place in that Wednesday final ought to be hers. After that, we'll start fighting about where she stands in Irish sport. By then, hopefully we'll all be a bit better informed.

3PADRAIG AND THOSE HOLES Other years have promised the world and delivered nothing approaching it but . . . and maybe this is the fine January weather talking . . . for some reason this year feels different. It feels like maybe the one when Padraig Harrington finally wins his major.

There's a great old story told about a cox in a long-forgotten Olympics sitting in his boat exhorting his crew to the line. There was maybe only 100 yards or so left and whether he'd planned it to a tee or was just struck by inspiration, the words came to him perfectly timed with his charges' strokes. fiIf not you . . . who?fi he screamed. fiIf not now . . . when?fi

Maybe when Ronan Flood comes back from his honeymoon, he should set about tattooing those words onto Harrington's Pro V1s. The winning of the Order of Merit cleared the decks for Harrington and he has only one world left to conquer. His chance will come at some stage and it will be then that he'll have to ask himself the questions.

If not him . . . who? Tiger, obviously, but for one thing, as Darren Clarke pointed out during the week, Tiger has a first child on the way and that will present its own distractions. For another, Harrington faced him down and beat him in that play-off in Japan at the back end of last year. There are others, of course, but none that Harrington shouldn't feel he can beat.

And if not now . . . when? Well, this is much trickier. Maybe never is the simplest and most honest answer. As we inch another year closer to the 10-year anniversary of the last European major winner, there's a whole generation of Ryder Cup stars out there who will never win one. Harrington is one of them, maybe the best of them, certainly the one in the finest fettle just now. But if he's not careful and doesn't get it done soon, it will only be another few years before he's Colin Montgomerie, plugging away and sustaining a career on lost hope and wistfulness.

You, Padraig. In 2007, Padraig.

4WORLD CUP FEVER . . . NO, REALLY Look, you're not going to be able to fight it, alright? The biggest week of the sporting year will take place in the middle of March with Cheltenham (of which more anon), the culmination of the Six Nations (of which some below), the club finals (of which some some other time) and Ireland's first ever foray into World Cup cricket. Zimbabwe will be there for the taking on the Thursday before a St Patrick's Day showdown with Inzamam Ul-Haq and his Pakistan team. With Jamaica a very friendly five hours behind us, what better way to round off 17 March than in front of the telly watching on?

Oh, they'll get trounced, naturally. There's a sliver of a chance of success against the torn-to-shreds Zimbabweans first up but Pakistan and the West Indies won't be messing about in their bid to take the trophy off champions Australia (above). Still, it will be a week of history so the sooner you just learn to accept it the better for all concerned, okay?

5THE PREMIERSHIP For once, it's worth tuning in to. For the first time in four seasons . . .

Arsenal's invincibility in the year before Jose Mourinho arrived rendered the thing every bit as hard to give a toss about . . . you tune into the results on a Saturday with genuine interest.

A couple of points dropped here by Manchester United is important only in the context of three won there by Chelsea. It's like watching proper sport again and it feels good.

When even as tiresome a collection of spivs and chancers as are housed by the Premiership can provoke a warm feeling again, you know for sure that sport isn't dead on its feet. Who could have believed just four months ago that the front-runners for the player of the year awards would be Didier Drogba and Cristiano Ronaldo? People running out of patience with Mourinho you could see, but Alex Ferguson being reinvented as some sort of cuddly old doyen of the game? The world's gone mad.

May it last to the final day.

6KIEREN FALLON Where all the other events on this page are to be looked forward to with hand-rubbing relish, maybe this one comes with a little dread attached. The next few months will either finish Kieren Fallon or invigorate him like an early morning shower. An attempt by his legal team to get the conspiracy to defraud case against him thrown out this month is a possibility and would take care of one prong of his woes but if it doesn't materialise or is unsuccessful, he will stand trial at the Old Bailey in September. In the shorter term, he will be serving a drugs ban until the beginning of June.

It doesn't have to be the end of him. He still works day by day for Coolmore, riding out for Aidan O'Brien at Ballydoyle. And there's every chance that when he comes back in June, he'll carry all before him in the famous dark blue colours. But beyond September, there is only uncertainty over his future. His story, already a barely credible page-turner, will hold our interest and more throughout the year.

7OPEN DOORS ON JONES'S ROAD Five weeks from now, the gates will fiy open and the public will click through into their 80- 110 seats and watch an Irish team play rugby in Croke Park. And once the brouhaha dies down, we'll all slowly come to the realisation that there's a French team playing out there too and that they have to be beaten (a fiver to charity every time we hear Eddie O'Sullivan or Brian O'Driscoll say in the week beforehand, fiWe have to remember there's a game to be played on Sundayfi, or any variation thereof).

Because quite apart from it obviously being a bit of a day in the history of the country, it's also the second leg of what we are led to assume will be the first Irish Grand Slam since the 1940s. Or at the very least, the first championship in two decades. It really wouldn't do to cough up a home defeat, regardless of which side of the Liffey it occurred on.

A fortnight later, there'll be England and the Union Jack and 'God Save The Queen' and all that business to contend with. And if the walls don't fall and all goes to form, Ireland will end that day with three wins out of three and only Scotland and Italy in the way of the Grand Slam. Simple, eh?

In March, there'll be a soccer match to see there also but it's a bit more difficult to get excited about it all. For one thing, so sweet and light is the mood between the GAA and the IRFU that it's impossible for the FAI to make even polite enquiries about when they might get a kickabout at the stadium without coming across as bold children who want a slice of the birthday cake before dinner's ready. For another, even if the choreography was as slick as a Take That reunion concert, nothing to do with the national soccer team is all that much fun any more. John Toshack has admitted privately that he is delighted to be playing Ireland in their first game at Croke Park because the week will inevitably turn into a bit of a circus. What confidence we can have in the rugby team to handle this kind of thing isn't exactly applicable to Steve Staunton's squad.

8WORLD CUP FEVER . . . NO REALLY, REALLY Oh, what's the point? There's a veritable ocean to pass under the bridge before this comes around in September so we'll just stick with the cliff notes for now.

Rugby . . . good. Ireland at rugby . . . good, getting better.

Rest of the world at rugby . . . not so good, apart from this one crowd from far, far away.

World Cup . . . good, could be great. World Cup group . . . tough, could be a nightmare. Need to beat . . . France and Argentina to avoid the All Blacks. Ouch . . . yes, ouch indeed. Irish base in Bordeaux . . . bienvenue, mes amis Irlandaises. Looking forward to the hospitality . . . bien sur. Getting . . . ahead of ourselves.

9STAR GAZING Everybody, it seems, owns a piece of Kauto Star. Born, bred and brought up in France, trained in England, ridden by an Irishman, watched by all. The real fascination with him is that we are having to continually readjust our sights each time he races.

When this season started, there were doubts over his ability to get the Gold Cup trip (all but dispelled by the Haydock win in November), then about the wisdom of running him at a shorter distance just because he could (blown out of the water by the Tingle Creek win), then about his jumping (not at all soothed by the two near disasters in the King George). The upshot is a horse which is probably in a different league to his opposition but we just can't be sure yet.

And so to Cheltenham with him, where he fell last year in his only run on the track so far. After the King George win, Ruby Walsh admitted that while the horse didn't feel like he was going to fall having hit the last fence, a mistake like that would bring him down at Cheltenham, as would the one at the fourth last. It all adds to the intrigue, as does the prospect of better ground for War Of Attrition to show what he's about.

Cheltenham will bring other joys too. The Champion Hurdle is for the third year in a row shaping up to be the race of the week.

For once, there's a real chance the winner won't be Irish trained although the closer it gets, the more you come around to the opinion that Detroit City would want to be a seriously special horse to beat Brave Inca up that hill at just five years of age. Iktitaf, Straw Bear, Hardy Eustace and Asian Maze have all had setbacks but can't all be out of the running and then there are what Donald Rumsfeld would call the known unknowns . . . Macs Joy, Harchibald and Feathard Lady. We know how good they were, we just don't know how good they'll be if and when they make it back.

There'll be plenty more. Newmill has a Champion Chase to defend, Schindler's Hunt and De Valira and Aran Concerto the good name of the Irish novices to keep up. Most of the races will be won by Irish jockeys and with the likes of Tom O'Brien and Daryll Jacob coming through, that's a situation that won't change for a while either.

0TYRONE'S RETURN 1 Tyrone will be back this year, all put back together again like a motivated Humpty Dumpty. While it's true that no team in the country could have absorbed the injuries they went through last year, the fiip side of that coin is that no team country will be infused with such an addition of talent this year as they will. Brian McGuigan, Brian Dooher, Conor Gormley, Colin Holmes and John Devine are all yet to sign back up for duty and still Mickey Harte could name a 31-man panel during the week for the McKenna Cup.

They may be the lazy man's tip for the All Ireland but there's a good reason for thinking the team that beats them next autumn will be champions. And considering how seriously they treat early season games in both the McKenna Cup and the league, it's reasonable to wonder just how long into the year the 9-2 about them lifting Sam will last.

Look around and who else is really rushing to put their hands in the air? Kerry have a new name above the door and no more Seamus Moynihan to keep things on an even keel. Maybe the Kieran Donaghy revolution will continue and maybe it won't. They're not a done deal, though. Not nearly. Armagh are still going but last year was their meekest exit, melting away in the last 10 minutes of a game as if they were other people entirely. And Dublin? Could you really trust Dublin? You'd almost feel as safe trusting Mayo.

The pot's bubbling, though. A handful of teams have their chances. You can't ask for much more at this time of year.