Jean Kleyn was causing absolute ructions as the Leinster and Munster tear strips off each other. Pretty much everyone else joined in! Who said this rivalry had lost its bite? Munster and Leinster used to hate each other. They used to despise each other. All that was a thing of the past, or so we […]

7 years ago

He’s dedicated, but he’s not completely mad. Midway through his second full season with Leinster and Ireland, James Ryan has only lost twice (Australia and Toulouse). One would think he has taken big victories as a matter of course but the Leinster lock tells us he always takes time out to toast the triumphs. 2018 […]

7 years ago

He will always be the very first ‘Champ Champ’ in UFC history and a true legend of the sport, but ‘The Notorious’ has some reputational work to sort in 2019. Conor McGregor once claimed he was going to get in, get rich and get out of the fight game. He then told fight fans, ahead […]

7 years ago

“When this guy buckles down and focuses, he does amazing things.” Dana White is one man that can surely relate to Conor McGregor. The UFC president was already doing well for money but he became a multi, multi-millionaire when the company was bought by WME-IMG for $4bn in 2017. White could have easily stepped away and let […]

7 years ago

If it sounds like something from a movie script, you won’t be surprised to discover the movie rights to Ben Ryan’s story have already been snapped up. How a 45-year-old from Wimbledon ended up as coach of Olympic gold medallists, with his very own waterfall and his face on Fiji’s specially commissioned $7 note is […]

7 years ago

In the summer of 2017, Mo Salah was all set to leave Roma. Two clubs were sizing up a move. Having revived his career in Italy with first Fiorentina and then Roma, Salah was subject to some interest from a host of clubs. When Roma demanded £40m for the Egyptian, several of those clubs opted […]

7 years ago

Finlay Bealham, Bundee Aki, Quinn Roux and Kieran Marmion are regulars in Joe Schmidt squads but a few more are pressing their case for inclusion. On Friday night, after Ulster had succumbed to double defeats at their hands, Connacht shared an image of the Guinness PRO14 ‘Conference A’ table. Glasgow, then Connacht, then Munster, and […]

7 years ago

It was not an easy answer for Conor Murray to give but he did not shirk the task. When he was up in Dublin – as part of Pinergy’s #WeAre16 campaign – Murray spoke extremely well about why he had spurned offers to play Top 14 rugby in France and committed to Munster for three more […]

7 years ago

Look at all those disgusting handpasses… Micheal Burns, Daithi Casey, Tony Brosnan. New day, fresh opponent, same wonderful antics from Dr Crokes. Crokes wrapped up their 2018 endeavours with another walloping victory and a shed-load of points and goals. The Kerry and Munster champions, who are still to take on Longford’s Mullinalaghta in the SFC semis, […]

7 years ago

Over the course of the season, the one thing that stands out is how consistently good so many Irish players were. In March, Joe Schmidt’s men claimed the Grand Slam by walking into Twickenham and completely outclassing the reigning champs England. Victory was never in doubt on a Baltic day in London. Our Player of […]

7 years ago

So you’re telling us there’s a… chance? Mick McCarthy brought out the big gun – his Ireland assistant Robbie Keane – when he went to meet West Ham midfielder Declan Rice. England boss Gareth Southgate is also keen on the youngster and we are currently locked in a stalemate. The new Ireland boss is trying […]

7 years ago

Gems, one and all

7 years ago

“You don’t go swimming without getting wet.” Josh Warrington beat Carl Frampton after 12 gruelling, gripping rounds in Manchester on Saturday night. The Leeds native out-foxed and out-pointed The Jackal to win on all three of the judges’ scorecards but the crowd stood to acclaim both men after one of THE fights of 2018. Warrington and […]

7 years ago

Safe to say, the Portuguese did not see the end coming. Jose Mourinho’s stint as Manchester United boss came to an end after just two and a half years and the club let him go ‘with immediate effect’ on Tuesday morning. As previously reported, Mourinho arrived at the club’s training complex at Carrington just before […]

7 years ago

Back in February, Ireland went through 41 phases to create a drop goal opportunity that Johnny Sexton nailed to stun France. Dan Leavy and Sean Cronin were part of that relentless drive into the French half and, on Saturday night at The RDS, they were heavily involved again, this time in Leinster blue. Leinster came […]

7 years ago

Donncha O’Callaghan rides the remarks about his Technicolor shows in good spirits and contemplates desert island companions as Luke Fitzgerald arrives for his run-through with Tommy Bowe. It was not long ago that these three men would have been up to their eyeballs in the festive interpro schedule and dreading the training run, or full-on match, […]

7 years ago

LEINSTER – 33 CONNACHT – 29 Connacht will have nightmares over this one. 17 points up with 17 minutes to go, they conceded an added time try to Leinster under their posts to lose in heartbreaking fashion. 29-12 up after a Jack Carty penalty, Connacht should have seen out their first win over Leinster in […]

7 years ago

Unreal start for the Norwegian at Cardiff. Manchester United won a game of football, were fun to watch and scored five goals. What kind of pre-Brexit time-warp is this?! Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s first game as caretaker manager of Manchester United could scarcely have gone better. The Red Devils finally had a bit of spark to […]

7 years ago

62% of retired rugby players have suffered mental health problems. As stand-outs figures go, this one from the Rugby Players Association’s latest players’ survey certainly stands out. Mike Tindall was part of a new breed of rugby players that emerged after the game went from amateur to professional in the mid 1990s. It took a […]

7 years ago

Darren Cave knows his own mind and he’s comfortable enough in sharing a piece of it. There is nothing wildly controversial or provocative in Darren Cave’s latest encounter with the media, but it is so refreshing to hear a rugby player just speaking from the heart and not worrying about treading on toes, or not […]

7 years ago

The best of the best

7 years ago

First up, Ulster and Connacht, but the December 29 clash at Thomond Park is shaping up to be unmissable. Munster were always expected to roll out the big guns for their Guinness PRO14 fixture against Leinster, after Christmas, but the defending champions are doing likewise. Johann van Graan’s side travel up to Kingspan Stadium on […]

7 years ago

Jose Mourinho has gone but life moves on for Manchester United. United parted company with Mourinho on Tuesday morning and with a ‘Bye guys’ to the waiting media outside the Carrington training complex, he was out the gap. The club will have to stump up a chunk of compensation but the board must have felt […]

7 years ago

José Mourinho has missed his chance to give this exciting youngster his senior debut. This time last week, Mourinho was still the Manchester United manager and he was speaking highly about two young talents – Mason Greenwood and James Garner. With United already qualified for the knock-out games, Mourinho used the fixture to rest some […]

7 years ago

“Attack. Attack. Attack.” Twice in the space of four days, the Manchester United fans urged Jose Mourinho’s team to embrace an ethos that had served the club so well over the previous two and a half decades, and back beyond the Alex Ferguson era. A close friend of mine spoke to me the day after he […]

7 years ago

Interestingly, the announcement of a contract extension and serious talks about another were the first moves Manchester United made to let Jose Mourinho know they were calling the shots. Jose Mourinho has left Manchester United after two and a half years with the club. During his time at Old Trafford, he got a troubled club […]

7 years ago

Each to their own but the former Ireland international will find a long, meandering line of folks ready to disagree with him. It was recently pointed out by a gleeful Liverpool fan that the club had ended up getting in Alisson Becker, Virgil van Dijk and Andy Roberston for only £6m more than the £142m […]

7 years ago

Austin Healey joked that the reason there was so many Irish was that so many rugby fans from our humble isle had hogged the phone lines. Of all the team of the year selections, you would struggle to find ones without Cian Healy, Tadhg Furlong and Peter O’Mahony. Ireland won 11 from 12 Tests including a […]

7 years ago

This partnership will surely flourish in time, but Conor Murray’s rash solo play did Joey Carbery no favours. Conor Murray has enough credit in the bank to cover him for quite a while but he made the wrong call at the end of the first half in Munster’s Champions Cup defeat, away to Castres. With […]

7 years ago

As frontrunners go, Scott Robertson is definitely the best dancer. Here is what we know right now: Steve Hansen will step down as All Blacks head coach after the 2019 World Cup Joe Schmidt will ‘finish coaching’ after the World Cup campaign with Ireland Hansen would like to see assistant Ian Foster take over Joe Schmidt […]

7 years ago

The punishment may be retrospective and will do Munster no good, but this can’t be allowed to stand. Castres and Munster was an ugly affair in Thomond Park, last week, and atrocious weather conditions did not help. It was just as grim in France last night but the rainfall had little to do with it. There […]

7 years ago

‘Raging Al’ took Khabib Nurmagomedov the distance at UFC 223, last April. On 32 hours notice, earlier this year, Al Iaquinta agreed to a title fight against Nurmagomedov after first Tony Ferguson and then Max Holloway were forced to withdraw. If that wasn’t crazy enough, this all took place amid the chaos of a fight […]

7 years ago

The pair are on a collision course for 2019. Katie Taylor can only beat what is being put in front of her and she is doing that with some panache. As she did as an amateur, Taylor is proving the dominant fighter in her division and starting a lot of very good boxers on fresh […]

7 years ago

Clear respect between the two champions. Katie Taylor moved to 12-0 at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night as she outclassed and outpointed Eva Walhstrom. The Bray native successfully her WBA and IBF world titles in style and the only blip was that she could not force a stoppage before the final bell sounded. Following […]

7 years ago

Mo Salah never seemed to get a fair run of it at Chelsea. Having signed from Basel in the January 2014 transfer window, the Egyptian showed enough in his first four months to suggest he could push on during 2014/15 season. He played only eight times, however, and was loaned out to Fiorentina in the […]

7 years ago

Castres – 13 Munster – 12 Castres vowed to avenge their defeat to Munster last weekend and they just about did it in a filthy, foul match in France. Joey Carbery kicked four penalties for Munster but the concession of a first half try and an Andrew Conway score getting chalked off ultimately did for […]

7 years ago

“We were at the pub when he hit that drop goal and we nearly brought the roof down!” James Lowe may have loved nothing better than winding Johnny Sexton up when he first arrived at Leinster, but each minute more he spends in the outhalf’s presence convinces him he is in the right place, and […]

7 years ago

‘Stick your teeth back in, chap!’ Gloucester were left stunned when an Exeter Chiefs team all but eliminated from the Champions Cup put a serious dent in their hopes of making the knock-out stages. The locals at Kingsholm showed up expecting their side to record their third win of the pool stages, especially after Chiefs […]

7 years ago

This will go down a treat with fans from The Kingdom, and further afield. Kerry picked a real winner, late last year, when they approached former captain Paul Galvin to help design their 2018 jerseys. Galvin has launched his own fashion label since retiring from inter-county GAA and he brought Kerry back to their roots […]

7 years ago

Seamus Coleman has not yet reached the consistent performance heights from before his ghastly leg break but the level of criticism coming his way is over the top. Manchester City reclaimed top spot in the Premier League be seeing off Everton 3-1 at Eastlands. Gabriel Jesus put the league champions 2-0 ahead before Dominic Calvert-Lewin halved […]

7 years ago

There was no way in hell he was missing out. James Ryan has a couple of games to negotiate yet but he is on course to finish 2018 with 20+ victories (for Leinster and Ireland) and only two losses. He heads towards 2019 as part of teams that are reigning Guinness PRO14, Champions Cup and […]

7 years ago

“Cristiano sent me a message, congratulated me and told me he is happy for me and I deserved it.” Cristiano Ronaldo’s representatives may have been disgusted at their man missing out on the Uefa Player of the Year award, earlier this year, but the player did reach out with some warm words to Luka Modric. The […]

7 years ago

“That could be an amazing environment.” That was Damien Duff’s take, back in November, on the chance of going over to Scotland to get involved with Celtic. The former Chelsea and Ireland midfielder is set to take up a role as assistant manager with the Celtic Reserves, under Tommy McIntyre, in early 2019. Duff has […]

7 years ago

A damn good team, but one glaring omission. The end of the year has seen a stack of awards being handed out and ‘best player’ and ‘best team’ accolades being decided upon. Johnny Sexton has featured heavily in a lot of prize-givng and ‘Best Team’ categories. The World Rugby awards were close to a green […]

7 years ago

They got there in the end. The top of the UFC’s lightweight division is getting extremely crowded and Max Holloway may yet be joining the party in 2019. There are a stack of hungry fighters lining up for a tilt at the title but the division has been held up due to legal and disciplinary […]

7 years ago

Jacob Stockdale took some convincing that he was playing Italy last month. The Ulster and Ireland winger enjoyed an incredibly successful 2017/18 – from a personal and team perspective – but a hamstring tear delayed the start to this season. While teammates, and rivals for an Irish jersey, tore into it from the get-go, Stockdale had […]

7 years ago

“Usually, when you are at your lowest ebb, something breaks for you.” Ronan O’Gara never had too many fears about making it into the Irish squad once he made his Test debut, all the way up to his final Six Nations campaign in 2013. The Munster legend proved himself so many times over his rugby […]

7 years ago

There were murmurings of this at the time, but confirmation has come through now. In late 2017, as he looked towards knocking England off their Six Nations perch, Joe Schmidt was contacted by New Zealand Rugby. NZ Rugby, under Steve Tew, wanted Schmidt to step away from Ireland and join the All Blacks coaching staff. […]

7 years ago

Two of Munster’s unsung heroes come in for richly deserved praise. Munster’s 30-5 victory over Castres was a game many of the 21-odd thousand fans that were at Thomond Park were soon cast to the deepest, darkest recesses of their minds. Job done, move on. Joey Carbery and Chris Farrell, who will miss the return trip […]

7 years ago

Criticised for ‘chopping and changing’ his positions at Sale, Will Addison’s Ireland caps have come at wing, outside centre and fullback. Will Addison must have struggled to keep himself grounded when, months before his Ulster debut, Joe Schmidt called him in to train with Ireland before they flew out to Australia. He did not travel […]

7 years ago