For the Irish, this was their best-ever medal haul at the European Cross Country, but it was also so much more. For so many years, they had come to this event with hopes rested squarely on the shoulders of Fionnuala McCormack alone.

It was both a look back and a glance forward — an appreciation of a past great and the heralding of her successor. And through all of yesterday’s National Athletics Awards in Santry, there was an excited sense of expectancy with an Olympic year starting to loom on the horizon.

Ciara Mageean and Kevin Dooney will lead the women's and men's sides.