A hotel search website shows that Republic of Ireland fans will spend an average of €1,156 for three nights’ accommodation if they stay in the cities hosting the Boys in Green’s group stage matches in next month’s European Championships.

With the Cheltenham Festival now just a fortnight away, Willie Mullins talks through some of his formidable team for the showpiece meeting.

We bring you a round up of all the latest news and reviews from the world of entertainment. 

Thomas Bartlett and Paul Muldoon weren’t surprised that lines by Ireland’s great poet worked so well as song lyrics, writes Padraic Killeen

The Gloaming may not be a conventional band, but they could win the Choice Music Prize, writes Ed Power

Hurling-Shinty: Scotland 3-6-4 (23) Ireland 2-3-4 (14)

WATCHED the first episode of The West Wing, for the first time in years, the other night. I’d forgotten how good it was: a dense, fast-paced political drama, packed with dialogue and incident. You knew you were watching something good.

Supreme Novices’ Hurdle favourite Vautour could take in the Deloitte Novice Hurdle at Leopardstown on Sunday ahead of his trip to Cheltenham in March.

IT WAS a strange way to start a band. “In 2011 we announced we were going be a group,” says the Gloaming’s Iarla Ó Lionáird.

Noel Meade has confirmed that the unbeaten Road To Riches will head straight to the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle at Cheltenham.

Miguel Delaney takes a look behind the scenes at Sky Sports News ahead of today’s transfer deadline

Absolute positions on abortion are no longer tenable, as three days of hearings showed, says Michael Clifford

Ireland 8-11 (51) Scotland 4-3 (23) (Ireland wins series 6-2)

A new stage adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s only novel does not shy away from Dorian Gray’s bisexuality, says Pádraic Killeen

Sizing Europe and Big Zeb, the first two home in the sportingbet.com Queen Mother Champion Chase last year, are on course for a rematch at Cheltenham next Wednesday.

NEXT month a number of really talented horses will arrive at Cheltenham with no more than an outside chance of winning.

IRELAND 2-9 SCOTLAND 1-11

THE enigmatic Dublin-born fiddle player Caomhín Ó Raghallaigh has stirred the traditional scene, releasing five albums in 10 years, four of them collaborations with leading lights in Irish music.

BRILLIANT mare Voler La Vedette rallied in terrific style to snatch the Grade 2 Keelings Irish Strawberry Hurdle.

Tolstoy: A Russian Life

Assem and Ehab Allam have confirmed their takeover of npower Championship side Hull City.

Ireland – A History

Hull's board will continue to meet throughout the week in an attempt to address the club's perilous financial problems.

Hull owner Russell Bartlett has claimed the club can “trade through” their current financial difficulties.

A leading scientist says the answer to Ireland's long-term bio-fuel needs is in the sea.

THE Church showed the first signs of bowing to public pressure when senior figures said the religious orders should pay more to compensate abuse victims.

DETAILS revealed today about the secretive 2002 deal agreed by the then Minister for Education and Science Dr Michael Woods with Catholic religious orders implicated in child abuse suggest that it is even more inequitable than was first imagined.

A DIFFICULT situation for pig producers became a crisis at the weekend with the discovery of the dioxin problem, a conference was told in Tullamore, Co Offaly, yesterday.

NO LONGER the loveable losers that last year became the first US sports franchise to lose 10,000 games, the Philadelphia Phillies can put away their symbols of futility.

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan defended his bombshell book about the Bush administration today, saying he did not speak up against the overselling of war in Iraq because he gave the president the benefit of the doubt.

Downey Jr is certainly getting the work these days to underscore a remarkable career comeback, though in this indifferent college tale you wonder why he took the role … the money helps, we suppose.

Blackburn boss Mark Hughes insists David Bentley has it within his grasp to become a permanent feature under new England coach Fabio Capello.

It’s dismaying to realise just how much of one’s life, at the point of moving, should have been in a skip years before.

EXPECT a rush by several of Leinster’s established senior clubs to acquire the services of Seapoint full-back Felix Jones after this performance.

Seapoint 47 Coleraine 15, Dubarry Park

US President George W Bush today opened three days of intensive consultations on Iraq, aiming to reverse the course of the nearly four-year-old war and energise his final two years in office.

The amount of money pocketed by top company chief executives has surged by 30% in the last year, a new survey revealed today.

US President George Bush has full confidence in Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, even if others dislike the Pentagon chief’s “bedside manner,” a top White House official said.

Kaizer Chiefs 0 Manchester United 1

US President George Bush met newly-named Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki in a surprise visit to Baghdad today to discuss the next steps in the troubled three-year-old war.

Charlton have released strikers Shaun Bartlett, Jonatan Johansson and Francis Jeffers as the Addicks prepare for a fresh start following the departure of long-serving manager Alan Curbishley.