REMEMBER 1995? Jack Charlton started the year looking out at the Lansdowne Riots, finished it resigning as Irish manager. Steve Collins gave Chris Eubank a couple of beatings as super middleweight champion of the world. Plans for a ?200m light rail system were unveiled in Dublin amid much scepticism. Brian Lenihan and Neil Blaney were buried.

Gerry Adams told a rally in Belfast the IRA hadn't gone away, David Trimble took over the UUP and said something similar, while Bill and Hilary Clinton arrived in the midst of it all to give everyone just a little hope. Easy to get lost in that lot but Jason Sherlock didn't. A 19-year-old that started the year unknown to all rose from those ashes and made football sexy.

It started that season against Laois in the Leinster semi-final. With little to choose between the sides, he popped up with a point to send Dublin into a final against Meath where he again starred. Come the All Ireland series, Dublin expected and while Mark O'Connor glued himself to his back for 23 minutes it only took one mistake.

The Cork man slipped, Sherlock raced away and buried the ball. Boom boom boom, let me hear you say Jayo.

By September he was an All Ireland champion, lining up and shining alongside Charlie Redmond and Mick Galvin in a full-forward line that helped dispose of Tyrone and end Dublin's run of 12 years without an All Ireland.

They were old warriors, but he was flash and fast and it quickly caught on. Perhaps he was overhyped back then, but it's fair to say he's been underrated ever since.

Between 1996 and 1999 the bang became a whisper as he was hung and drawn between basketball and soccer commitments with UCD and then Shamrock Rovers.

But stillfConor Mortimer talks of the 1999 Leinster championship game between Dublin and Meath, an encounter he attended, and how he never got over Sherlock's movement. Maybe it was that basketball he'd played but it was a perfect example of what Mickey Harte refers to as 360 degree football, when you don't have the ball you turn your back and defend.

Come 2000, Sherlock came again. He was mesmerising in the drawn Leinster final with Kildare - switching to halfforward for a spell and proving to everyone he was just as dangerous from the outside, constantly threatening from out around the 40 - and again in the first-half of the replay.

All that was missing was the glory and it looked to have come in that replay as Dublin went in at half-time six points to the good. Problem was, they doubted Kildare's spirit.

Dermot Earley put his head down and goalled. Tadgh Fennin did the same. Sherlock and Dublin were left to live off past victories.

Some of his best football has come in the days since, despite the hardships. There were times when Tommy Lyons left him on the bench.

There were times when it looked to be over but he never went away. The Luas was finally finished in 2004 and Sherlock was still hanging around, picking up an All Star nomination after dragging Ryan McMenamin all over Croke Park two weeks running in the All Ireland quarter-final against Tyrone. By 2005, David Trimble had gone but Sherlock remained.

RTE's The Dubs: Story Of A Season perfectly documenting Sherlock's painful demotion for the Leinster semi-final against Wexford that year, and how he came from the bench to score the winning goal just like the old days.

By 2006, Hilary Clinton was talking about running for the US presidency and Sherlock had picked up another All Star nomination and another Leinster title.

And as 2007 gets moving and Jack Charlton spends his time away from it all fishing, Sherlock's still there, watching as he passes by history.