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.

If you read the Eamonn Fitzmaurice interview in these pages last week, you enjoyed a terrific insight into what it means to stand on a sideline with a day-glo BAINISTEOIR bib on your back.

This reporter spent the last three weekends in Mallow, watching the drama of the McGrath Cup unfold and then... refold, as Cork won the competition last Sunday.