Every sporting year is defined by the scale of the outstanding national and international achievements of our leading sportsmen and women. By any token 2004 rated as one of the best in recent times, notwithstanding the embarrassment of another Olympic Games doping controversy.
The early part of the year was dominated by the exploits of the Irish rugby team. World Cup disappointment was quickly forgotten as Eddie O'Sullivan's side captured Ireland's first Triple Crown since 1985, in the process beating newly crowned world champions England in their first game at Twickenham since claiming rugby's most prized title.
Irish rugby owes much of its improved standing to very prudent marshalling of limited resources by the IRFU. Unfortunately, their counterparts in the FAI demonstrated a more inept approach to sports administration as they continued to lurch from crisis to crisis, culminating in the resignation of another chief executive.
Questions of competence were confined to the FAI's off-field endeavours, however, as the Republic of Ireland team made a terrific start to their 2006 World Cup campaign. Brian Kerr's side go into 2005 with realistic hopes of winning automatic qualification for the finals in Germany.
That level of international success at rugby and soccer was matched at golf where Ireland's three leading players, Padraig Harrington, Paul McGinley and Darren Clarke, played a huge role in Europe's annihilation of the much-vaunted US team in their Ryder Cup showdown in Detroit. Given the scale of the Irish contribution to Europe's Ryder Cup success, it is appropriate that the next staging of the event will be at the K Club in 2006.
However, the cut and thrust of international sport very often paled against the drama and intensity of the All Ireland football and hurling championships. In a remarkable summer of games, it was the emergence of smaller football counties like Fermanagh and Westmeath that provided many of the enduring memories of 2004. For all its flaws, the GAA knows how to tap into the essence of sport, nourishing a sense of honesty and fairness.
Those fundamental sporting concepts seemed somewhat alien at the Athens Olympics, where doping scandals dominated again. Not for the first time, Ireland found itself in the full glare of another major doping controversy as Cian O'Connor's gold medal on Waterford Crystal turned from elation to embarrassment. It would be a great injustice if this bizarre affair was the abiding memory of a truly exceptional year.