Buds of a New Sporting Year Begin to, er, Blossom

January, bah. Good riddance, ye miserable, godforsaken wretch of month! Have we, as humans, not achieved a sufficiently advanced degree of control over our own happiness and the pursuit thereof to be able to come up with a better opening month to the year than January? Has no-one ever raised their heads from the drudgery to exclaim: "Come on lads, is this the best we can do?".

The penury. The darkness. The cold. There must be a better way!

As ever, the Australians appear to have it sussed. They have their summer in January, and they don't go too crazy about the whole Christmas thing (have you ever tried to cook a turkey on a barbecue?), so they're not as broke as we are. They've moved their January to July and even then its not as bad as the real January.

Thank God (well, he invented Janaury, so it was the least he could do) for the Heineken Cup and a couple of feisty FA cup ties to warm the cockles, otherwise TSA's visit to Auschwitz last Monday would have been the cheery highpoint of the month. - (note to self: refer last sentence to Blogger bad taste checker, as may be borderline)

Anyway, the arrival of spring sees a rosier hue in the cheeks of the sporting community, with the return this weekend of serious inter-county GAA action in the form of the National Leagues and, in particular, with the clarion call of the first big hullabaloo of the year in the form of rugby's Six Nations championship.

This time next week the dark days of January will be but a memory and the weeks and months will only fly in as Winter Olympics, Grand Nationals, US Masters, Cheltenhams, Snooker World Championships, Grand Prixs, Champions League nights and then high summer in Germany all come hurtling at us, the brightly coloured and noisy cavalcade of fantastic nonsense that our world is now unimaginable without.

So fare thee well January, you're good for nothing. Bloody hell, even your transfer window is depressing.