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.

TEATIME wasn’t progressing too well that evening last week – negotiations with the two-year-old on blueberries as a viable dessert had broken down irrevocably, it seemed – when a half-heard comment at the end of the radio sports news seeped through.

MEDICAL sources said last night that a trapped nerve injurytypically produces numbness, pain or deadness in the limb.

A COUPLE of weeks ago, Shay Livingstone was chatting to a friend about his impending move from Cork to Galway.

WE’RE aware of the arguments from the other side before we even hear them outlined.