It was the France of Platini, Giresse, and Tigana that mesmerised us first. Between 1982 and 1986, that generation of French footballers bewitched and bewildered those of us already hopelessly in love with the game of football. The only time most of us were caught on the fence was when they faced Brazil.

Major sporting events can do strange things to people. Days blur into weeks and weeks into months and before you know it you are cocooned in a bubble outside of which almost everything else takes on a strangely abstract meaning

Tommaso Allan knows the routine.

All in all, it’s been the best opening week we could have asked for. Certainly, as Rugby World Cups go. 

It’s almost a year now since this column fulfilled a near life-long sporting ambition with a trip to Chicago to see the Bears host the Green Bay Packers at the iconic Soldier Field.

If modern sport has taught us anything it could be the maxim more doesn’t always mean better. In terms of quality, that is, not money. Sport being the global mega-business it is means the urge to expand is just as inherent and relentless as in every other branch of capitalism, but it is rarely a case of everyone being a winner.

Correct us if we’re wrong here, but isn’t football’s silly season supposed to peter out once the season actually starts? Not so, it seems. Here we are with three games gone in the Premier League and the fluff is still overshadowing the important stuff. It’s almost as if a media that had to rely on the mad and mundane for the off-season finds itself unable to kick the habit.

There has been a trend developing in football, or soccer, or whatever you call it yourself, whereby multi-million pound players leaving big clubs for other big clubs tweet or Instagram or communicate in some other new-fangled way their gratitude to the fans and the institution they are leaving behind.

Nothing can prepare for you for your first glimpse of Garvaghy.

This is the 15th year in which we have had qualifiers and an All-Ireland quarter-final stage and results in the last eaight seasons alone combine to paint a very depressing backdrop, writes Brendan O’Brien