In three weeks, the ribbon will be cut on Connacht Rugby's new and improved Dexcom Stadium, completing the three-year, €40m redevelopment of the Sportsground.
The artificial pitch and new floodlights were the first step, followed by the building of a new training centre and indoor pitch, but the showstopper of the redevelopment has been the Clan Stand, the top of which might well rival Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney for the most scenic view in an Irish sports stadium.
Off the pitch, the future is bright, but the worry is that by the time the province welcome Leinster to Galway for the grand opening in late January, their 2025/26 season could already be meandering to a close.
The BKT United Rugby Championship table doesn't necessarily make for grim reading, with the province ninth overall, just outside the play-off and Champions Cup qualification spots, and with a game in hand.
Bonus-points are doing some heavy lifting though, with their eight bonus-points more than any other side have picked up in the league, and accounting for exactly half of their season tally.
Those extra points here and there may well prove to be hugely valuable in the second half of this campaign, but at the moment they are merely keeping the season afloat rather than putting wind behind their sails.
The period between the Autumn Nations Series and the Six Nations dictates your goals for the season, with a 10-game block of week-on-week club rugby accounting for a third of the URC regular season, and the full European pool stage.
By the end of January, teams know whether they’re on track for their targets, or scrambling to make up lost ground.
"We had a good look back at the last couple of years, and we probably haven't performed as well over Christmas periods, and it's kind of put us in a little bit of a hole," Connacht scrum-half Caolin Blade said last month, previewing a crucial run of games over Christmas and New Year.
That was before a historically poor defeat to the Dragons in Newport, which was followed by another interpro defeat to Ulster last week, with both games following a similar script.
On each occasion, the province were the better side early on and led 7-0 and 10-0, before collapsing in the 10 minutes either side of half time.
Away to the Dragons, they gave up 27 unanswered points between minutes 32 and 50, while similar was to follow against Ulster, who scored 26 of their 29 points at Dexcom Stadium between the 33rd and 53rd minutes.
"They’re amazingly frustrating," Bernard Jackman said of Connacht on this week’s RTÉ Rugby podcast, adding that they’re mid-game collapses in recent weeks have been "very worrying".
"They can play, and even their start against Ulster was very bright; they had Ulster completely under the cosh, down in the 22, and Ulster didn't panic, but still Connacht didn't convert, and then they get ransacked then by Ulster for a period, and then the game was over."
Even before those two damaging defeats to Dragons and Ulster, the province suffered an embarrassing collapse away to Ospreys in their Challenge Cup pool opener.
Having been utterly dominant in the opening quarter, the province raced into a 21-0 lead and maintained that advantage until just before half time, only to be reeled in and lose 24-21 against the struggling Welsh region.
A comfortable home win against Georgia’s Black Lion was their only victory in December, with their three defeats last month all marked by periods in which the opposition put up most – if not all – of their points in an unbroken spell.
"It's not just inconsistent from game to game, it's within games," Jackman added.
"I know that Stuart [Lancaster] is probably the coach in Irish rugby does do more work around leadership and composure than any of the others, that's very much something he's passionate about, and you're not seeing any of the benefits of that.
"And it's not even the defeat, it was the nature of it, the switching off, and then coming from behind, and a bit of a late charge, whatever. And even at the end, that Sean O'Brien penalty at the end [against Ulster] was madness.
"So even when there's a chance they can pull off a huge comeback, they kind of shoot themselves in the foot."
If Connacht are to turn their season around before the Six Nations break, they’ll have to do something they haven’t done in exactly two years – win an interpro.
Lat week’s defeat to Ulster was the province’s 10th consecutive loss against a provincial rival, their worst run in derby games since an 11-in-a-row losing streak between 2012 and 2014.
That statistic feels even more daunting with back-to-back URC games against Leinster this month, with French pair Montpellier and Montauban sandwiched between in the Challenge Cup.
On Saturday, they are likely to face a much-changed Leinster side after the defending champions went strong against Munster in Thomond Park last week, but the injuries are also piling up for Connacht now, with Mack Hansen, Shayne Bolton, Jack Aungier, Shamus Hurley-Langton, Hugh Gavin and Caolin Blade among those currently out, while Bundee Aki may need to be given his mandatory rest after featuring in four of the last five games.
After missing out on Champions Cup rugby for two seasons in a row, getting back into the URC’s top eight needs to be the priority for Lancaster’s side, and so the focus must be on these two games against Leinster, as well as the final URC outing versus Zebre, before the Six Nations.
A win this weekend at Aviva Stadium could turn the season around, and make those consolation bonus-points seem a lot more valuable down the line.
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Listen to live commentary of Leinster v Connacht on Saturday from 5.30pm on RTÉ Radio 1.
