'Sport and Ireland: A History' debunks what you thought you knew about our favourite games

Carson played hurley, but not hurling, cricket was once a national sport, and the GAA regarded chess as a gaelic game, as Michael Moynihan discovers in an account of the games people played both on and off the field.

IT’S funny that in sport, one area of endeavour based more savagely on binaries — win/loss, first/second — than almost any other sector, myth and legend can be so tenacious.

Or perhaps that’s just how we operate: Beyond the result and the scoreline an entire world of conjecture and rumour can be shrouded in mystery.