Cork won’t have it all their own way, but have the confidence and the character to earn a perfect send-off to Páirc Uí Chaoimh

Drawing Germany in the Euro qualifiers sent a few shivers down Irish spines still bent under the weight of that humiliating 6-1 World Cup defeat in Dublin in October 2012.

Dennis Rodman has checked into an undisclosed alcohol rehabilitation centre to treat his long-time struggle with alcoholism, his agent says.

During the 2011 Ryder Cup in Medina Golf Club, Chicago, television cameras captured Rory McIllroy as he looked into a cloudless sky to see ‘GO RORY!’ being spelt out by a plane emitting puffs of smoke from its bowels. He stopped, took out his phone and took a photo.

Forgive the fuzzy image, but he was falling at the time.

Former basketball star Dennis Rodman continued to laud North Korea’s ruler as an “awesome kid” and his father and grandfather as “great leaders” at the end of his basketball diplomacy mission to Pyongyang.

Ex-basketball star Dennis Rodman has hung out with Kim Jong Un during an improbable journey to North Korea, watching the Harlem Globetrotters with the leader and later drinking and dining on sushi with him.

Ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman met North Korea’s Kim Jong Un on the third day of his improbable journey to Pyongyang, telling the leader “You have a friend for life”, a delegation spokesman said.

It was only last May when Melanie Nocher decided she had better look up this female boxer everyone was raving about as a gold medal prospect.

DESSIE FARRELL knew this day was coming.

YOU CAN get cynical in this game pretty easily. You meet idols with feet of clay, the clay ending somewhere in the mid-thigh region.

It would have been an altogether different spectacle in South Africa had our boys taken their rightful place among the nations of the earth. At least Sepp will know better the next time we ask for special dispensation.

England 35 Barbarians 26

Tonight the Airtricity League kicks off after a 12-round close-season that left even Roddy ‘Queensbury Rules’ Collins punch-drunk. After all the off-field attrition – though the battle scars are yet to heal – a football match will break out.

Johnny Depp meditates in a room full of vampire memorabilia.

THE fabled Limerick Leprechauns are polishing the buckles on their boots and preparing to take to the field once more.

CURLEY “Boo” Johnson, billed as the world’s fastest dribbler, is among the squad named today by the Harlem Globetrotters who will tour Ireland next month.

England captain David Beckham believes his move to Real Madrid has given him a “new lease of life” and proved his doubters wrong.

THE exaggerated words of respect that were bandied about Manchester yesterday will be consigned to the past in the most ruthless fashion at Old Trafford tonight.

The legendary Harlem Globetrotters basketball team launch their first UK tour in almost a decade this week, after bouncing back from the brink of bankruptcy.

MANCHESTER UNITED will face the biggest challenge of their footballing lives trying to rescue a Champions League semi-final place at Old Trafford in 13 days.