Ten sports clubs, including a school and hockey club in the constituency of Sports Minister Shane Ross, were excluded from receiving Government grants because of the high fees they charge for members or students.

The perennial Welsh failure to keep the red flag flying over the European club scene must have socialist superstars like Aneurin Bevan and James Larkin spinning in their graves.

Mayo GAA PRO Paul Cunnane has slammed “crackpots” on social media for some of the personal abuse aimed at county board officers recently.

By the time you read this column, I will already be in 2020.

Andy Friend has coached all over the world but even he couldn’t recall a more madcap win than that which his men forged in a dramatic finish at the Sportsground on Saturday.

A blistering second-half triple saw Cork Harlequins win a 3-2 cracker over Catholic Institute at Rosbrien for a morale-boosting first win of the EY Hockey League season in their last tie before Christmas.

On Monday, an ignominious landmark in the Casement Park Project was reached — 1,000 days since the last planning application was lodged.

Liverpool midfielder Georginio Wijnaldum has become the latest player to declare he’d walk off the pitch if racially abused in a match.

This year's Sports Capital Programmes shows wide disparities in grants allocated to traditionally middle-class clubs and those in more popular working-class areas.

Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty wants a root and branch reform of how sports grants are allocated and says clubs should not be excluded over “the need to look after the disadvantaged”.

Twenty months after stepping down as GAA director general, there remains a great respect for Páraic Duffy’s tenure at the top. However, there are elements of his legacy that time has already tested and failed.

Doubts your columnist entertains.

The Bishop Moynihan Cup hadn’t been ferried down the hallway to the East Kerry quarter underneath the stand at Austin Stack Park before chat over the Kerry captaincy for 2020 struck up.

Cage Warrior Graham Boylan left Cork at 18 with no Leaving Cert and no money, just an attitude. Now he is the CEO to Europe’s biggest MMA organisation and provider of UFC fighters, having brought on stream the likes of Conor McGregor.

Lisa Maguire’s decision to retire from professional tournament golf just 17 months after taking the plunge will come as no surprise to regular observers of the vicissitudes of life in the paid ranks.

Fourteen years ago, Síle O’Callaghan was among Mourneabbey’s history-makers as they won their first All-Ireland club title at junior level.

Shane Lowry suffered a disappointing day on the greens and admitted he now needs to shoot three rounds in the mid-sixties to have any chance of winning the TurkishAirlines Open.

The Blarney and Bishopstown GAA clubs have joined together to fund a games promotion officer who will promote Gaelic games in eight local schools — a unique initiative funded completely by the two clubs, the first of its kind in Cork.

Halloween is here and so are the All Stars, but I don’t think there was anything that counts as a real scare in the 15 hurlers chosen.

Go Katie go.

Eamon Wallace comes from a family of high achievers and when he first hit the inter-county scene as a lightning quick Meath forward in 2013, his potential looked limitless.

Any talk of a defensive crisis at Manchester City was eased as they cruised to a Champions League victory at Shakhar Donetsk to put memories of a shock defeat at Norwich behind them.

From the moment Killian Spillane kicked the score to put Kerry one up in the 66th minute of the drawn game, any candid analysis of the last 10 minutes doesn’t reflect well on the Munster champions.

Cork U20 captain Peter O’Driscoll has described as premature the commentary which pronounced Cork football as being dead and buried.

There is something uniquely British about the tennis at Wimbledon. Where else do you still see players playing in “all whites” and on grass courts to wildly enthusiastically patrons, who nostalgically talk as much in the past as the present, while sipping their Pimm’s and eating their strawberries and cream.

Sports Minister Shane Ross has accused Donal Conway of reneging on a promise to step down from the FAI at the upcoming Annual General Meeting (AGM after he was nominated unopposed to continue in the role of president of the association.

The 133rd Wimbledon tennis championships are in full swing and, in time-honoured British tradition, the UK is fixated on seedings, scorelines, and strawberries and cream.

The Camogie Association has made the decision to postpone all fixtures involving Limerick, Kerry and Wexford teams after players fell ill following an outbreak of gastroenteritis at last weekend’s double-header fixtures Croagh Kilfinny GAA grounds.

Pádraig Harrington has not given up hope of claiming what would be his second Irish Open title despite a hugely disappointing second round thee-over score of 73 at a gloomy and wet Old Course in Lahinch on Friday morning.

Roscommon’s Conor Devaney thinks his side have no hope of claiming a second Connacht title in three years if they repeat the performance they produced against Mayo in Galway on Sunday.

It is among the great sources of regret in professional football, the lost connection between players and fans.

PlayStations, personal stereos, third-level education and traffic — John Giles’ big four inhibitors of sporting talent.

“I wouldn’t like to have missed any championship matches for Clarecastle in my time, but maybe they need to look at something.”

For a while there on Saturday, it was as if Leitrim had misunderstood the instruction to put the clock forward and had instead wound it all the way back to 1994, when they won the Connacht title.

If Mayo supporters didn’t see their lives of final anguish flashing before their eyes as Stephen O’Brien squared the ball for David Clifford in the first minute of additional time then they are lying.

That Kilkenny is the only other county in the past 30 years to back up an All-Ireland final win with a hurling league title the following spring tells you the path which this Limerick group are forging for themselves.

I was on the road to Dublin yesterday morning at 6.15am. It wasn’t easy to roll out of the cot at that ungodly hour but I arranged Kilmacud Crokes training early so I could be organised and be able to get into Croke Park early.

Former champion Rory McIlroy made it two wins out of two with a 3&2 victory over South Africa’s Justin Harding on day two of the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play last night.

Certain words have featured quite a lot in interviews with James Horan over the last few months.

Earlier this week, a graphic posted on Twitter by Mayo GAA blog Ah Ref! revealed that players from the west of the county had seen the most action in this year’s Allianz League campaign to-date with 45%.

Limerick face into this Sunday’s NHL final in good fettle.

Take a former Test player with an evolving philosophy about what it means to be a coach, send him on a mission to absorb the best a champion Super Rugby side can offer and then bring it back to an enabling environment with players just as eager to embrace anything that can help them develop their game.

It tells a tale of the scale of the challenge facing Cavan this weekend that not even Mickey Graham, the man who inspired the miracle of Mullinalaghta, seems overly confident.

Eden Hazard scored twice as Belgium recovered from a blunder by Thibaut Courtois to beat Russia 3-1 last night and start European Championship qualifying campaign on a high.

Sunday’s league semi-final will tell Galway manager Micheál Donoghue whether the fringe players he has persisted with throughout the spring are capable of making an impact come championship, according to former Galway forward Niall Healy.