Kieran Shannon looks back at three epic encounters on Sunday, June 26, 2011 that proved to be momentous moments in shaping the destinies of three provincial championships.

There’s little in sport as distasteful, as sly and scurrilous sledging, yet little as smile-inducing as a bit of witty in-game trash-talking either.

And just like that, Waterford are again everyone’s second favourite team.

In football there always seems to be someone giving out about football, writes Kieran Shannon. 

The hip thing to do in recent times at any mention of the romance of the FA Cup is to scoff, but is anyone else uplifted that for all the talk about a fitting Wembley send-off for Stevie G, the termination of that possibility has simultaneously opened up the prospect of a fairytale story for a Shay G?

For a weekend that has served up some lovely football in recent years, there’s been little love for the football league semi- finals in some quarters.

You might have won a major before but following it up with a green jacket elevates your status to another level.

It was hard to know which prompted the greater sense of outrage last Saturday night: the way Dublin and especially Derry went about the joyless business of trying to get a result in Croker or Jarlath Burns declaring via Twitter that the game signalled ‘The death of Gaelic football’, writes Kieran Shannon.

For all we now hear that sportspeople have no obligation to be role models, our rugby players and coaches are.

She won’t be there today. While her husband Rob powers it out this morning around the southern Slovakian spa town of Dudince in a time that should qualify him for next year’s Rio Olympics, Marian Heffernan will be at home in Douglas with the kids and expecting another one.