Last week was a mixed one for former athletes, with Texas coursing through their veins.

Americans like their team sports to be reduced to duels, the battle of stars who are more often than not defined by recent form.

I was never much of a hurler and abandoned the game as a 16-year-old, worn out from the summers of sorrow that went hand in hand with being a member of the worst underage Blackrock team in living memory.

Just over a decade after Cavan’s footballers beat Kerry to win the 1947 All-Ireland final in Manhattan’s Polo Grounds, a horse called Cavan won the Belmont Stakes in Long Island.

Until this season, the Los Angeles Kings ice hockey team were really only known for one saga: the infamous big-money acquisition of Wayne Gretzky, a move that shocked the sport and tore the heart out of a city and a country in the late 1980s.

At a press conference announcing the Macklin-Martinez fight at Madison Square Garden back in January, my phone rang. Colin Morgan was about four yards away from me but he was on a crutch — it was easier just to call me.

The Mexican drug cartels operating with alarming bloodlust around the hinterlands of El Paso, Texas have promised there’ll be a one-day truce on Saturday, June 16.

Joey Barton told his Twitter followers on Sunday that after he got sent off against Man City, he tried and failed to get “one of theirs” to accompany him.

A few years ago, a Bantry friend nonchalantly pointed at the full moon as we hurtled towards his hometown and predicted a night of violence, destruction and half-eaten chicken suppers.

Tuesday night training session in the Bronx. The whistle blows and powerful New York full forward CJ Molloy stiff arms his marker and shoves him away.