“Life is about timing,” said the American track and field star Carl Lewis — and he ought to know.

I miss the old Lansdowne Road. There, I said it.

There is no denying the status of Irish sport’s Big Three, soccer, GAA and rugby, yet all three have questions to answer

It’s that time of year again when some of this country’s finest and fittest stare into the inky blackness of those dark winter nights and decide that one more spin on the GAA’s carousel is beyond them.

Wednesday morning in a café in Portlaoise and Gordon Matthews, general manager for Rugby League Ireland, is responding to a query as to why people in this country should pay heed to the code’s World Cup which starts tomorrow and sees Ireland taking on Fiji, England and Australia in the obligatory group of death.

You gotta larf. The only other option is to cry, to look ahead to next summer’s World Cup with a knowing dread and to what will, on all recent form, be another public bout of self-flagellation on the part of the England football team, its supporters and a media that feeds off the national XI like a shoal of sharks.

Quick. Off the top of your head: which is the bigger game? Munster v Leinster tomorrow in the RaboDirect PRO12 at Thomond Park or Ireland’s November Series opener against Samoa at the Aviva Stadium.

We do like a gripe, us Irish.

Work yesterday, as it so often does in this business, involved a lot of footwork.

Try as we might, sport simply isn’t meant to be stripped of its capacity to toy with our emotions.