THE long, sticky days hang on two tent-pole training sessions at the moment. One in the morning. One in the evening.

MIND your heads while I throw in the first cliché, if I may; in sport, there’s no gain without pain.

FATHER, ladies and gentlemen...

READER, I want you to close your eyes. Go on, shut them tight.

WITH the smell of drying paint in my nostrils and freshly-laid grass under my feet, I giddily surveyed the new Lansdowne Road stadium when it swung open its just-hung doors recently.

They say on the Semple Stadium turf you’re never a boy. Always a giant. So too perhaps in Thomond Park.

AS our little country feels the bony fingers of the IMF on our shoulder and the cold winds of financial oblivion against our grubby face, we are often lectured – throughout the media – by so-called ‘self-made men’.

After the trigger word ‘Saipan’ was alluded to, Keane quickly and clinically rattled through the shortcomings of half of Capello’s squad.

THIS is going to be about a hurling man – but let’s start with some baseball.

HUMAN slingshot Rory Delap strides into the room, a new World Cup football loaded in his oxter.