It may have evaded your gaze over Christmas, but the 2018 GAA season began in 2017. The final weekend of the year witnessed the return of the O'Byrne Cup, meaning it's time to focus on the year ahead. With that in mind, here are five players who could be poised to make a big impact over the coming months.
Brian Howard (Dublin)
Dublin's conveyor belt of talent is moving as remorselessly as time, and the next man to fall off it and stumble into a country's consciousness is likely to be Brian Howard. Comfortable at centre-back or in midfield, Howard was a member of last year's All-Ireland winning under-21 team and has flitted around the senior panel since: he was an unused sub in the All-Ireland final.
Don't take our word for it though. He is Diarmuid Connolly's tip to break through in 2018:
Keep your eye out for one guy, a lad from Raheny who played centre-back for the under-21s, Brian Howard. I think he is going to come on next year. In the next six to eight months you'll see Brian Howard put his hand up for a Dublin jersey. He came on in the Championship this year and didn't put a foot wrong. I'm surprised they didn't play him a little bit more this year, to be honest. Even in training, he is a leader. He's not a loud guy, he doesn't get in your face, but you can see he's a leader by the way he goes about his work.
He's a little bit like Con, when Con came in. Con would be a quiet enough fella, but you knew he was getting on and doing the work behind the scenes. We only get a select few hours together a week. If we meet up four times a week, that's only eight to ten hours together a week. If you think about it, that's a small amount of time.
But it's about what you do when you're not with Dublin: are you doing your recovery, or this or that. And if you're not, then you'll start falling behind.
You can see the guys who are doing it, and you can see them getting confident. And then they'll turn up on a Saturday morning for an A vs B game, hit you a shoulder and leave you on your arse!
David Clifford (Kerry)
How about that for research? Clifford is the highest-rated player of his generation, and word is that he will skip the under-20s and go straight into the Kerry senior panel for the 2018 National League.
Shane Murphy (Kerry)
Kerry were undermined somewhat last year by Eamonn Fitzmaurice's failure to settle on a consistent goalkeeper: swapping between Brian Kelly and Brendan Kealy before the latter left the panel.
Dr Crokes' Shane Murphy may be poised to solve that issue, however, and nail down a starting berth for himself. His kickouts were particularly excellent in Crokes' run to the Munster final, as teammate Gavin White testified to the Irish Independent:
Shane has everything under his belt. He has short kick-outs, long range, medium range and not only that, he can come up and kick a few (frees) as well.
We've massive respect for Shane. There's nothing that fazes him. There are a lot of things (he has) other 'keepers can't do. The way he plays, the way he kicks the ball out, he sets up a lot of things for us and he can send massive kick-outs over the halfway line which sets up an awful lot of scores.
Given Brian Kelly's plight from the tee during the summer - one of which he managed to send over his own goal-line - Murphy could be the man to be put in place next year, so as to be a relatively senior figure by the time Jack O'Connor's precocious minors are ready to lay siege to Dublin.
Peter Cooke (Galway)
Galway's under-21s pushed Dublin all the way in last year's final, but they have already lost the stand-out Cillian McDaid to the AFL. With that age grade now defunct, a number of that squad should get some top-level exposure in the national league. Moycullen's Peter Cooke may be among them. He was Galway's main free-taker throughout the under-21 championship and kicked five points from midfield in the final against Dublin.
Normally a defender, he is redolent of Peter Harte, and it was that kind of forward thrust from deeper positions where Roscommon held the advantage in the Connacht final, so Cooke may have what it takes to breach the first-choice ranks in 2018.
Lee Brennan (Tyrone)
Brennan shot to prominence with some absurd scoring at club level in Tyrone last year, one of which featured a haul of 3-14 in April for Trillick, 3-8 of which came from play.
In spite of that dazzling performance and a regular contribution to Tyrone's under-21s, Brennan struggled to make an impact under Mickey Harte last year: he played just three minutes in the league (off the bench against Roscommon) and came off the bench to kick a point in the Ulster final and All-Ireland quarter-final.
If Dublin's evisceration of Tyrone in the All-Ireland semi-final forces Mickey Harte to reassess the defensive bent of his set-up, Brennan may be in line to profit.
