So, after a six-month absence, something approaching proper inter-county football returns tomorrow. Another year where we hope we can do better than the one just gone, another year that we know could well turn out to be worse than the last one. From this standpoint, however, all we can do is sit back and watch the year’s action develop.

Starting the year with a derby clash against Galway is as good a way as any to get the inter-county season going again. Despite it being only the start of February and only the league, there’s still likely to be a whiff of cordite in the air at McHale Park tomorrow afternoon. Joe Kernan didn’t take the job with Galway just for the air miles and he’ll no doubt be keen to be the man hogging all the headlines on Monday morning, letting all and sundry know about how great his western adventure has started. Johnno – canny political alleycat that he now is – will be equally keen to give this new rival one in the bonce and it’s obvious that he’s picked a team with this very aim in mind.

Because of this, I think we can expect yet another toss-of-a-coin encounter between these two great rivals. Earlier this week, I was brooding deeply that we would get our holes kicked tomorrow but, having seen the two team selections, I’m not so worried now about such a scenario coming to pass. We could well lose tomorrow but I’d be more than a little surprised if they thumped us, regardless what kind of pre-Christmas training they were doing. This is Galway in Castlebar after all and so we can have no excuse if we’re not fully tuned in for such a contest.

I’ll be spending most of the day on the road tomorrow and probably won’t make it back to base until around the time that the chisellers are heading to bed so it’ll be close to midnight, I suppose, before I have the match report up. I’ll probably do some post-match audio mumbling, though, before I hit the N5. ‘Till then, muchachos.