As we tick into a new year and all it has to promise, it's always worth looking back.
But just like last year, you'll need binoculars to look back as we're going to go miles in reverse into the distant past of Irish sport. A hundred years back no less and this time it will be 1925.
GAA
It's fair to say that the second half of the 20th century and what we've seen of the 21st so far have not been kind to the Mayo senior footballers.
And 1925 is no different even though the county did briefly appear to have got hold of their first All-Ireland title before fate intervened.
How that came to pass is a result of a maelstorm of controversy that swept through that championship with Connacht the epicentre of it all.
Amid endless objections largely related to player eligibility, and subsequent replays, the province took five months to complete its rounds.
First, an objection was made after Roscommon beat Sligo in the quarter-finals that May with a replay invoked.
That led to a saga even more relentless than the one that occurred between Dublin and Meath 66 years later as the two counties drew the next three replays.
Finally it seemed to be over after replay number four when Roscommon pipped Sligo 77 days after their original meeting.
But, you guessed it, another objection was made and a further replay ordered taking it to a sixth game. Having 'won' twice in the five previous match-ups, Roscommon were defeated and it would be Sligo's turn to come out on top as they eventually advanced to the Connacht semi-final.
Meanwhile, Galway and Leitrim needed 'only' three games to be separated from each other in their semi-final, with the Tribsemen ultimately prevailing to book a spot in the decider against Mayo, who had been waiting patiently all the way through the summer before beating Sligo in the Connacht semi-final in early October.
Such was Mayo's wait for their Connacht rivals to get on with business that they had already been nominated by Central Council to play in the All-Ireland semi-finals where they would meet and beat Wexford at Croke Park in late August.
The other semi would see Kerry and Cavan go up against each other. But - and you're forgiven if the word is becoming repetitive - objections were lodged by both sides.
This time it wasn't so much the objections that were thrown out by the powers-that-be as much as the two teams themselves. Incredibly because they were both disqualifed and there was no finalist on the other side of the draw, Mayo had won the All-Ireland by default.
As the great philosopher Homer Simpson would say of 'de' and 'fault', the two sweetest words in the dictionary.
But the cartoonish championship was not over yet unfortunately for Mayo. You may remember a few paragraphs back that Galway had booked a Connacht final against Mayo that wouldn't take place until mid-October. Well, the Tribesmen would win that and as a result were declared All-Ireland champions with the decision confirmed by Central Council - the first Connacht county to achieve the feat and at Mayo's expense.
Galway would subsequently be invited to play in the Central Council tournament later that winter, going on to triumph in that competition by overcoming Wexford and Cavan (who advanced to the final due to Kerry withdrawing in protest) in the semi-final and then final respectively by January 1926.
One would shudder to think what the social media coverage would have been like if 1925 was replicated today.
In contrast, the hurling championship was much more sedate, although there was still time for Kilkenny to object against a defeat to Dublin in the Leinster final.
The Cats would lose the All-Ireland semi-final to Galway, who in turn were denied a clean sweep of 1925's football and hurling titles, as Tipperary triumphed in the final on 6 September.
SOCCER
As this writer explored in Dublin and Paris during the build-up to the 2024 Olympics, the first two official matches played by what is now the Republic of Ireland national team took place at the 1924 Summer Games in the French capital.
The following year however, the FAIFS (Football Association of Ireland Free State) team didn't play a match in 1925, with the nation's fifth ever game not coming until the following year in a friendly against Italy.
But on the domestic front, Shamrock Rovers would enjoy a memorable double-winning year, winning the 1924-25 League of Ireland, pipping perennial rivals and defending champions Bohemians by three points to win their second title.
On St Patrick's Day, they would win the FAI Cup final at Dalymount Park, this time against Shelbourne.
RUGBY
Ireland's incremental improvement since the early 1920s would continue in the 1925 Five Nations as they built on the previous year's third-place by going one better and finishing second behind a rampant grand slam-winning Scotland.
Highlights along the way for the Irish were the opening round win over France in Paris and a 19-3 demolition of Wales in Belfast, while they also avoided defeat to England in a Dublin draw in between.
