RTÉ's Greg Allen met the moment as much as the Irish athletes in Rome in front of him over the past week. 

Are England finally ready to win or will they be undone by the Maguire paradox?

It is rare that the managerless Irish soccer team is a shining light at the moment, but in offering a glimpse of an Ireland that celebrates ethnic diversity then it’s pretty elite.

The massed ranks of decision makers at Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge make it hard for managers to budge.

If Gaelic football resembles the three-point turn scene in Austin Powers, trying to back its way out of tactical and structural dead ends, hurling seems designed to accommodate each modern rationalisation and just get better.

Who is the best player in the world right now? Is it Mbappé, who won a World Cup in his teens but on Tuesday was being playfully tossed between Nico Schlotterbeck and Mats Hummels like a hacky sack?

These are heady days for Aston Villa fans, that small but statistically significant section of society who are preparing for their first European semi-final since 1982.

Jim McGuinness is the living embodiment of George Bernard Shaw’s theory that “all progress depends on the unreasonable man”.

A 4.45pm kick-off, pretty close to Saturday tea-time sports primetime, all set to put on a show…and what do the blokes at the European Champions Cup do? Plonk the biggest club game in world rugby this year right on top of them.

The departure of CEO Jonathan Hill concludes another farcical FAI chapter.