Like just about everybody else at Sligo Rovers, team manager Tommy Cassidy was happy to have seen the back of the year 2000 when he arrived at the Showgrounds yesterday following a longer than expected Christmas break.
Indeed with relegation back to the first division, an acrimonious parting with many of the first-team squad and a financial crisis to round things off, it's probably a safe bet that Cassidy and his directors are in the purists' camp when it comes to the millennium. The thinking up in Sligo is likely to be that the more things that started from scratch on Monday, the better.
Not that this season has been all bad news for Rovers, but after a fine start they have only recently recovered from a rough spell that has left the team on the edges of the promotion battle rather than at the very heart of it where they might well have been.
Still, the club's form immediately before Christmas was encouraging, with two wins earned in no small part by the goals of newly-returned striker Ian Gilzean. And now, for the first time this season, all of Cassidy's key players are fit. So Friday's Harp Lager FAI Cup tie at Bray look like a decent opportunity for a club with little or nothing to lose to put one over on Pat Devlin's knockout specialists.
"I wouldn't say they we're especially confident," says Cassidy as he ponders the prospect of visiting the Carlisle Grounds, "but they've beaten Shelbourne and Bohemians recently so they'll be expected to beat us easily, which is a nice position for us to be in.
"Maybe they should do too but with players like Ian, Jim Sheridan, who we have only had back recently after nine months, as well as Padraig Moran and Carl Van Der Velde - who are both fit again - I'd have to say we have a chance. And if we play as well as we can do this weekend then I guarantee that we'll make a game of it.
Cassidy's greatest nightmare would be a match-winning performance from Wesley Charles, only recently sold to Bray by Sligo to bring in Gilzean. Cassidy admits to having taken a good deal of criticism over the sale of such a popular figure but expresses no regrets, insisting that he rates the player but needed to make the switch.
"What we needed up here was a leader and while Gilly is a leader and has shown that over the last few weeks, Wesley needed to be led. I've no doubt that Wes will do well for Bray in the Premier Division but the fact is that he wasn't what we needed in the position that we're in right now."
It's a position, he maintains, that is much improved on the one he inherited a year or so ago. Players whose commitment he questioned have departed, an under-21 team based entirely on locals has already started to provide players for the first-team squad and decent training facilities have been secured. But there remains, he admits, plenty more ground to be covered.
He concedes that whether he is around to see the job through depends in no small part on whether Rovers are promoted this season. And at this point that is some way short of being a certainty.
A good Cup run, though, would certainly strengthen his hand and, he reckons, generate confidence within the team that would in turn boost league form. A late winner from Wesley Charles this Friday on the other hand and the long bus journey home is likely to be a painful one for Belfastman Cassidy.
