In Tralee last Saturday night, all of the clichés that make up much of basketball’s great lure and lore applied. They were hanging from the rafters. The players could smell the popcorn. The place was hoppin’.

While most of the talk around the new-look hurling championship has been how it will severely test the depth and durability of each panel, Walsh Park’s hosting of Kilkenny at the weekend brought to light how it’ll test the suitability of certain provincial grounds as well.

The GAA needs to acknowledge that, along with its much-heralded community and amateur status, there is a pervasive cynicism that is ‘unique to our games’, writes Kieran Shannon

There is no other team sport that is more reliant on one position consistently throughout a contest as a gridiron team is on its quarterback writes Kieran Shannon.

In hurling, there is no longer a Kilkenny that bestrides the narrow world like a colossus but in football there is.

Why has it been another winter of discontent? asks Kieran Shannon

There’s hardly a dressing room or workplace or TED talk you’ll come across these days that does not go on about ‘culture’ and ‘values’.

At this time of year when you’d nearly get the impression that every county player would rather he was anything else, it’s worth bearing in mind that there have been some players that we haven’t heard complain about their plight.

Maybe Keane’s time at both Ipswich and Sunderland hasn’t been so much tainted as forgotten, writes Kieran Shannon.

Can LeBron James lift a fourth NBA title and be compared to Michael Jordan as the sport’s GOAT, or will he lose in the finals for the sixth time? asks Kieran Shannon