Des Smyth will never forget the first time he saw Rory McIlroy hit a golf ball. "Oh my God," was his reaction. This weekend, a new generation of young Irish golfers will be at Seapoint for the Irish Amateur Close Championship.

DES SMYTH, now 57, has already won the Ladbrokes.com Irish PGA Championship six times and quietly fancies his chances of a seventh title when the event gets underway over the Seapoint links, Termonfeckin, Co Louth this morning.

Dublin’s streets would be vastly safer if an elite garda public order squad of the 1960s, famed for its fearlessness, had not been disbanded, a senior High Court Judge said tonight.

Clandeboye's Jonathan Caldwell found his putting touch to lead at the halfway stage in the East of Ireland Championship at Baltray.

American singer Laura Branigan has died from a brain aneurism at the age of 47.

AN Iranian Kurdish man living in Nottingham has sewn up his eyes, ears and mouth in protest at his treatment