It is one of sport’s greatest guessing games, wondering what would happen if today’s superstars could go toe to toe with the legends of yesterday.

Wednesday morning in a café in Portlaoise and Gordon Matthews, general manager for Rugby League Ireland, is responding to a query as to why people in this country should pay heed to the code’s World Cup which starts tomorrow and sees Ireland taking on Fiji, England and Australia in the obligatory group of death.

JACK DOYLE, boxer, singer, actor, lover, drinker, was born a hundred years ago this Saturday, Aug 31, in Cobh, Co Cork. His life was preposterous — he knocked out Clarke Gable in a fight over actress Carole Lombard — but it ended, like that of so many prizefighters, in the gutter.

Katie Taylor faces a fork in the road in the coming weeks: Stick with amateur boxing and fight to retain her gold medal in Rio in 2016, or turn professional.

HUNDREDS of postal workers yesterday paid a poignant farewell to their Limerick colleague who died last Thursday when his mail delivery bike collided with a vehicle on his morning round.

Seconds Out

THERE are clear signs that Fianna Fáil is in trouble in the Cork East constituency and that some of its voters are defecting to Sinn Féin, leaving that party’s candidate well in the hunt for the last of the four seats on offer.

ANDY LEE and John Duddy could touch gloves sooner rather than later if the Derryman rises to the challenge thrown out by the Limerick southpaw yesterday.

THIRTY FOUR years after boxing’s last headline act at Yankee Stadium saw Muhammad Ali handed a controversial points victory over Ken Norton, the sport is preparing to return to the venue tomorrow night.

MIKE “The Rebel” Perez has not fought for more than a year but he will be doing some catching up at the UL Arena in Limerick on Saturday when fights twice on the undercard to the Andy Lee-Mamadou Thiam Yanjing Fight Night headliner.

THERE’S a moment in Ken Burns’ outstanding documentary series, ‘Baseball’, when Buck O’Neil, an old coach and manager, muses on the impossible glamour that was Manhattan in the 40s and 50s with a faraway look in the eye.

AS a member of the Cork junior hurling team that won the All-Ireland championship in 1958 I am hoping to organise a reunion of all my surviving old teammates and the next of kin of those who have gone to their eternal reward.

A man with "text book" paranoid schizophrenia has been found not guilty of killing his uncle in a "frenzied" axe attack by reason of insanity at the Central Criminal Court.

A man accused of killing his uncle in a "frenzied" axe attack was a "textbook paranoid schizophrenic" a jury at the Central Criminal Court has heard.

A man accused of killing his uncle in a "frenzied" axe attack was a "text book paranoid schizophrenic" a jury at the Central Criminal Court has heard.

A 1960s Batmobile sold for almost £120,000 (€90,600) at the same specialist car auction.

Colm O’Connor

MIKE TYSON did not lose his fighting heart some time after the sixth round in Washington on Saturday night when the former world heavyweight champion conceded defeat against a club fighter called Kevin McBride.

Lennox Lewis will be in good company today when he announces in London that he is to retire as reigning world heavyweight champion.