Having heard fellow columnist Derval O’Rourke sing the praises of David Epstein’s The Sports Gene, nothing would do me but to track the man down for a chat, and we made contact last week.

There are questions I asked, and questions I wish I’d asked. Over the years in sporting situations, some queries have materialised in the frontal lobes before being pushed to the back of the cranium, where they hang remain, spiky and unfulfilled.

Last Monday, Nate Silver re-launched his website, fivethirtyeight.com, writing a lengthy manifesto to accompany the new-look site, which features an equally lengthy list of new writers.

Make all the noises you want about the team, and the match, and the result, rather it being Brian O’Driscoll’s final international — O’Driscoll himself certainly did so all last week — but there’s no point in being reasonable.

Given that everyone is sharing their Brian O’Driscoll stories, I thought I’d give the benefit of my long history of encounters with the great man.

Identities are still protected under the statute of limitations, but the story bears retelling.

I won’t bore you too long with this one, but unfortunately it raises its ugly head once more and must be reintroduced to Madame Guillotine, if I can squeeze another drop of juice from that metaphor.

Lately in the pages of this newspaper, you may have seen a lengthy interview with Jim Nolan, the Waterford playwright.

What could best be described as a wave of molten outrage flowed down out of the northside of Cork last week with the news that the North Monastery primary school is to close.

Interesting to catch up with Owen Sheers during the week — Sheers is the poet who was artist in residence with the Welsh Rugby Union for a year, and wrote a book about his experiences sharing protein shakes with the Welsh back row, and kicking the ball back to Leigh Halfpenny after training.