Wildly optimistic but that’s the beauty of January

If you're a normal person, you'll think of the arrival of a New Year as a time of hope and possibility and a time for a final refresh over the last few days of the holidays before cracking into 2024.

If you're like me, the early days of January signal the arrival of the FBD League and the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you need to broaden your horizons beyond the GAA. I haven't managed that yet.

Granted, it's not quite as grim as it once was as supporters traipsed to often obscure venues to sample the early inter-county fare, but it's still a competition that helps whet the appetite ahead of the more serious stuff in the league at the end of this month.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at how all five football teams in the west of Ireland are shaping up ahead of the new season.

For a start, this is a big year for all five counties – when is it not says you? But in all five cases, the managers are at an important stage of their tenure.

In Mayo, Kevin McStay and co. are getting set for a second year in charge. How do you describe the first year? Very much a case of two seasons in one, in many respects.

The league offered huge positives and a national title at the end of it all. That achievement isn’t to be sniffed at. Yet, Mayo then went on to lose three championship matches over the following couple of months. The quarter-final against Dublin ran away from Mayo in the second-half but the margin of defeat – twelve points – suggests there’s quite a bit of ground to make up if they’re to conquer Everest in 2024.

All things considered, given it was McStay’s first year in charge, it wasn’t a bad effort overall. Some relatively new players emerged to great effect and collected a significant amount of game time. The likes of David McBrien, Jack Coyne, Jack Carney and Sam Callinan all look set for lengthy careers in the green and red. Jordan Flynn was superb all year through.

Key questions remain ahead of 2024. Can Cillian O’Connor get to optimum fitness to provide an attacking focal point all the way through the season? Aidan O’Shea looked back to his best last year, but can Mayo find scores from elsewhere? You feel there’s more in Tommy Conroy as he returns to form after a serious knee injury while Ryan O’Donoghue and James Carr also have the ability to cut loose on any given day.

You don’t need me to tell you what represents success for Mayo these days, but in Galway, the same is true and Padraic Joyce has been bullish in stressing that point. But Joyce, now moving into his fifth year at the helm, will be conscious that time at inter-county level is finite and it’s running out in their quest with this group to deliver the ultimate prize.

The Tribesmen were one of the biggest disappointments of last year's championship and went out with a bit of a whimper in the end when losing to Mayo in Salthill. It may be a tad unfair to sum their season as such, given they had an amount of injuries during the championship. Yet, when you look at the quality at their disposal, Galway should have done better. For that reason, I believe they will go well this year if key players can stay fit. Shane Walsh is playing some great stuff for Kilmacud Crokes, so he'll need to be managed off the back of another long club season. He remains the outstanding player in the province.

With Walsh fit and in form, along with the likes of Damien Comer, Matthew Tierney, Sean Kelly and others, the Tribesmen can make a big impact this time around.

Can Roscommon go better than last year?

Davy Burke returns for a second season at the helm with a new-look backroom team. The Kildare man enjoyed a very productive first year in charge but questions remain as to whether they can maintain those levels into 2024.

Retention of Division One status is a big one but will be extremely difficult with Dublin and Derry returning to the top tier. Reaching an All-Ireland semi-final would be the goal, you would think, for the Rossies. Finishing in the top two of their All-Ireland series group would be a big help in trying to achieve that goal. Any silverware in Connacht would be a bonus as they prepare to face Mayo, most likely, at home in a semi-final.

They must do it all too without the services of Ciarain Murtagh, who has opted out, but Ben O’Carroll remains an attacking threat with All-Star potential and the county’s newest All-Star winner, Enda Smith, continues to provide much of the spark around the middle third.

Leitrim must deliver this year you feel under Andy Moran.

The former Footballer of the Year has brought a real energy and enthusiasm to his position but he’ll be conscious that anything other than a promotion in the National League will represent a disappointment this term.

They’ve gone close in recent seasons but have yet to display that real consistency needed to make the jump. They’ve also produced a decent result or two in the Tailteann Cup.

This year, the availability again of Keith Beirne will be pretty important to any potential promotion tilt. If he’s good to go again, and they can avoid the spate of injuries suffered last year, Leitrim could be good enough to finish in the top two. Don’t forget, they went very close last year and lost to Sligo by a point in the final round robin match – if they’d won, Leitrim would have made the ten point mark and earned promotion themselves.

And as for Sligo, Tony McEntee's tenure has brought some welcome stability and they finally came good last year to earn promotion from Division Four, while reaching a Connacht final and playing in the All-Ireland series was also a boost and should stand this young squad in good stead.

Now, though, things become a whole lot more difficult.

Division Three is a notoriously topsy turvy section, where you can make the case for all sides to do well or do poorly. But, with Clare and Limerick on the slide from Division Two and both counties appearing to be at a low enough ebb, Sligo can be confident enough about their prospects. In fact, with four home games, Sligo can have genuine aspirations to get to, or at least close to, the 10-point mark and, if they do, they may even get promoted.

Again, a run in the All-Ireland series in the championship would be preferable to any Tailteann Cup action but it's definitely no guarantee with both Leitrim and Galway standing in the way on their side of the draw. The Leitrim quarter-final will be especially tricky but if Sligo negotiate that successfully, anything beyond that is a bonus.

Maybe I'm being wildly optimistic about my home county's fortunes, but sure isn't that what January is all about?

See you at a game somewhere along the way.