Luis Suarez’s injury. Italy training in a sauna. Leighton Baines’ reading habits.

For almost 50 years BBC’s Grandstand show defined Saturday afternoons in the UK and it came to do something similar here in Ireland for many of us once the signal for the British channels began to be picked up beyond the east coast.

It was while gazing through the NFL schedule for 2014, which was revealed earlier this week, and other gridiron-related matters that our eyes happened to stray across a well-worn quote from John Madden, the Hall of Fame ex-coach, broadcasting legend and the face of millions of American football computer games around the world.

Sitting down with Aidan O’Shea in Croke Park earlier this week, it was impossible to avoid the contrast between the words escaping the Mayo footballer’s mouth and what was transpiring just across the River Liffey in Leinster House, where Paraic Duffy and Liam O’Neill were appearing before an Oireachtas committee.

I was five when I ended a brief dalliance with Bobby Robson’s Ipswich Town, swayed by the history of the Busby Babes, Munich, the Fifth Beatle and The King.

Travelling in to Dublin city centre last Saturday made for an entertaining ride.

The sensation was strange at first. Unfamiliar.

Brian Moore was co-commentator for the BBC at the Stade de France last Saturday as Ireland and France pounded into each other for 80 of the most intense minutes of sport you could ever watch through your fingers and he was prompted to remark at one point on the copious quantities of claret oozing from the heads and faces of the players involved.

Joe Schmidt hadn’t a word of French when he pitched up in the Massif Central town of Clermont-Ferrand back in 2007, but the Kiwi coach was a quick learner and he’s still known for dropping the odd peu de Francais into his vocabulary on those weeks when the opposition is of a Gallic flavour.

We’ve all at one time or another listened to stories told by the older generations about how things were in their day.