IF YOU’RE a sportswriting fan – and given what you’re holding in your hands, you probably are – you’ve noticed the recent explosion in the number and variety of Irish sports books.

OVER the last couple of days you could probably hear the sighing of thanks all over the country as GAA hacks exhaled their gratitude for Michael Ryan’s decision to drop Eoin Kelly from the Waterford senior hurling panel.

HAPPY new year to all readers, and fear not.

MM: How important is a winning pro franchise to a city?

USUALLY, the end of year column runs along lines as familiar as the main tracks from Kent to Heuston.

EVERY now and then Irish sports journalists of a certain vintage get wistful.

MAYBE the parallel universe exists where Joe Montana is an out-half, and not a quarterback, or where William ‘The Refrigerator’ Perry is a loose-head prop rather than a defensive lineman.

A CERTAIN amount of background noise seems to have been building in recent weeks about TV coverage and sport, and the quality of that coverage in particular.

RECENTLY your columnist played a soccer game with his colleagues, an inconsequential matter among good friends which was more about opening the lungs than the result (won by the ‘oldies’ 4-2, though: in your face, youthful exuberance!).

JIMMY BARRY-MURPHY didn’t dawdle when the call came.