James McClean is hoping that intensive rehab work he is undertaking in Dubai will help speed up his recovery from a knee injury in time to make him available for Ireland’s Euro 2020 play-off game against Slovakia on March 26.

Mick McCarthy has more injury concerns to contend with ahead of next month’s Euro play-off in Slovakia with after his regular left-back Enda Stevens suffered a calf injury on Saturday.

Here is a selection of people who have begun interesting new roles with companies in Ireland.

Oisin McConville has admitted he’ll ‘bail out’ of Crossmaglen with his young family if Brexit negotiations go badly and a hard border is reinstated on the island.

After Warren Egan’s equaliser in the 60th minute, Ryan Basquel’s perfectly-judged kick from distance put Ballyboden ahead as the momentum had well and truly shifted their way.

Ballyboden St Endas’ timing couldn’t have been better as they staged a late burst to claim their second Leinster title in four years in an attritional game in MW Hire O’Moore Park.

Dublin hero Michael Darragh Macauley left the field with a suspected concussion as Ballyboden St Enda's put their bodies on the line to secure a fourth county SFC title.

Laois chairman Tom Clear has lashed out at the decision to discontinue the Joe McDonagh Cup Champion 15 this year.

This time four years ago, Keith Earls was not handling the pressure of a World Cup at all well.

Holders Kilmacud Crokes kept alive their ambitions of back-to-back Dublin SFC titles when accounting for 14-man Clontarf by 0-16 to 0-8 in their quarter-final at Parnell Park yesterday.

Darragh O’Keeffe may not yet be a familiar face to National Hunt fans but the teenager from Mallow is a rapidly rising star in the sport, and potentially on his way to setting records in what is just his second season riding over jumps.

Maeve Higgins may be involved in pro-immigrant campaigns in the US, but she also produces plenty laughs in her spooky bigscreen debut, writes Esther McCarthy.

It appears there’s quite the mutual appreciation society developing between Mick McCarthy and James McClean.

After plummeting from the highs of Sheffield United’s Premier League promotion to the low of crisis club Bolton Wanderers, Danny Lafferty has found solace in the League of Ireland.

Here is a selection of people who have moved into interesting new roles.

“Do you reckon this will be Cody’s last year, Enda?”

Stephen Kelly, who played under Roy Hodgson at Fulham, believes the former England manager is just the man to get the best out of James McCarthy at Crystal Palace and help the midfielder refloat his international career.

Pat Critchley has heard Laois’ landmark win over Dublin described as the county’s most significant in the Championship since 1985 and can’t disagree.

Rugby players in an Irish Open Pro-Am are not an unusual sight. Along with GAA stars and jockeys, they are a staple of the pre-tournament entertainment at this annual stop on the European Tour.

Tomorrow, at Pearse Stadium, Galway midfielder Tom Flynn will hope to pocket a third Connacht SFC medal in four years, having started the previous two final victories.

Traditions are an intriguing twitch of the curtain, a means of discovering what people reveal when relaxed.

Actor Peter Gowen was ‘menaced’ by anxiety as a result of his early school experience, but it left him when part of his bowel was removed, he tells Margaret Jennings

Back in the 1970s, a few years after Bob Dylan released Blood on the Tracks, he was being interviewed about how it was such an outstanding album.

In my days putting together TV sports news bulletins there was always a certain level of sportsperson who would go high in the running order no matter what they were talking about or getting up to.

IIreland might have back-to-back Euro qualifiers looming next month but Mick McCarthy doesn’t think it’s a gamble that, in advance of those big games away to Denmark and home to Gibraltar, his Irish contingent at Sheffield United are heading off to Las Vegas to celebrate the club’s promotion to the Premier League.

The Taoiseach has admitted that the 2016 pre-election sod turning on the stalled Cork event centre was a mistake.

Defending champions Kilmacud Crokes began their Dublin SFC campaign on a positive note when defeating Ballymun Kickhams by 2-13 to 0-14 at Parnell Park on Saturday night.

After the conspicuous lack of success on Day One I’m twitchy.

It can bore the pants off many but for a considerable number of people politics is an addiction, says Alison O’Connor.

Ballyboden St Enda’s (Dublin) 2-25 Clonkill (Westmeath) 2-19

Goals in either half from Conor McCormack and Paul Ryan proved pivotal as Ballyboden St Enda’s regained the Dublin senior hurling crown when narrowly overcoming Kilmacud Crokes in their final replay at Parnell Park yesterday afternoon.

Karen Murray talks to a fundraiser who has personal reasons for getting on his bike to help raise vital monies for Down Syndrome Ireland.

The pushing and shoving over who really wants an election is the tribal violence of ward politics in a student union setting.

Kildare 1-16 Longford 1-13

‘I didn’t look at the legalities... they came to me for practical help’

Hurling in DCU wasn’t always the picture of such rude health.

Almost half of all women now say they enjoy DIY, but with some hardware stores still bastions of old-fashioned sexism, has the DIY trade cottoned on to the changing times? Ellie O’Byrne meets the sisters who are DIYing for themselves.

Fianna Fáil began the New Year behind. The difference is more important than the five seats that separate the two main parties in the Dáil.

The cheer that raised the rafters of Triskel Christchurch at 2.26pm yesterday was spontaneous and effortless, unlike the painstaking effort it took to get there in the first place.

The real battleground for the next election is rural Ireland, and that’s power, writes Gerard Howlin.

People have been questioning Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe on his Budget yesterday.

Say what you like about Enda Kenny but he never found himself embroiled in a row with LCD Soundsystem, writes Colm O’Regan. 

Leo Varadkar took his first bold step onto the pristine furrow — time stopped, breaths were held, and ploughing matriarch Anna May McHugh put her hands to her face in shock.

WHO knew Sinn Féin and Fine Gael had so much in common?