The four tries were selected by a panel of former players, including former Try of the Year winners Jamie Heaslip and Bryan Habana.

Kevin Barry, Jamie Heaslip, Donal Skehan and Andrea Corr are just some of the people shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards

Ireland legend Jamie Heaslip was never one to take a backward step during an illustrious playing career — and it’s an approach he continues to take as he creates a life outside rugby

As they celebrate 20 years of Agnes and her family on the stage, The Late Late Show will honour Brendan O'Carroll and rest of the cast of the show tomorrow night with a performance from Mrs Brown's Boys D'Musical.

Former Irish Rugby head coach Eddie O’Sullivan delivered a scathing appraisal of Ireland’s performance in today’s Pool A clash with Russia, saying the match was “like watching paint dry”.

That underwhelming Six Nations campaign? It was never his target in a World Cup year. The recent Twickenham hammering? When we finally get to hear Donal Lenihan properly he reveals he was talking to one of the players, they’d been in Portugal for nine days beforehand “and it was hell”.

Is it all over for sports analysis at long, long last? Have we finally gone over the brow of the mountain, beyond the peak and down the incline on the far side?

If an average Six Nations fixture takes place on the day of the apocalypse, a Rugby World Cup is a declaration of war.

It’s easy to forget just how big this weekend will be for the players.

Former Ireland internationals, head coaches, a World Cup-winning captain will be among RTÉ's stable of pundits for the Rugby World Cup.

Joe Schmidt makes his final trip to the Aviva Stadium this afternoon as he takes charge of Ireland on home soil for the 34th and last time.

‘Rugby World Cup,’ Jamie, those three words — what comes to mind when you hear them?

Jamie Heaslip says there are no words to console John Cooney, Mike Haley, and Finlay Bealham – the latest trio to be cut from Ireland's potential Rugby World Cup squad.

O’Brien missed what should have been his final game for his home province due to a hip injury but captain Sexton asked the Tullow Tank, who will depart Leinster for London Irish after the World Cup, to take the captain’s role and lift the trophy after a hard-fought victory in Glasgow.

Profits at the commercial firm operated by former Irish rugby captain, Jamie Heaslip last year more than doubled to €124,324.

The beginning of Joe Schmidt’s Six Nations career could have been so much smoother.

Jamie Heaslip has criticised the controversial plans for the introduction of a World Rugby League, citing player welfare and the future of club rugby as two major concerns.

Jonathan Sexton has been given the green light to face Bath today but Rob Kearney misses out with an unspecified injury which raises again the touchy subject of a player’s medical information.

A second win over the All Blacks in the last three meetings is a significant enough achievement for Ireland but what is even more satisfying is the team which got the job done this time around.

Former captain Jamie Heaslip believes Leinster are “even more dangerous” than last season as they begin their Champions Cup title defence against Wasps on Friday night.

Jordi Murphy admits he considered following Simon Zebo and Donncha Ryan out of the country, but picked Ulster instead to keep his World Cup hopes alive.

Keith Earls, named by his peers last night as Zurich’s Irish player of the year, is aiming to cap a memorable season by accounting for Leinster’s European champions and claiming a first trophy for Munster since 2011.

The hat-trick heroes are dwindling in ever greater numbers.

Word was that in-depth medical updates would be a thing of the past.

The duo are among six players departing Leinster this season.

Every position in the back line has been filled by Leinster’s Isa Nacewa, including scrum-half where he excelled in one game last season when Luke McGrath was sinbinned. The veteran New Zealander even scored a try while holding that fort, writes Brendan O’Brien

Sean O’Brien was in a pub in Carlow when Ireland claimed the Grand Slam.

Dan Leavy may be the man of the moment but the Leinster and Ireland flanker was keen to spread the love in the wake of his starring Champions Cup quarter-final performance against Saracens in Dublin.

So much for the Anglo-French carve-up. Four years on from the distasteful rupture that did for the Heineken Cup, and only two since the PRO12 failed to earn a single invitation for the quarter-finals, and here we are with three Celtic sides jostling with Racing 92 for a ticket to Bilbao in May.

Jamie Heaslip’s recent retirement has left a vacancy for the title of rugby’s ‘Mr Indestructible’ and one look through the Saracens duty roster for the season to date makes a persuasive case for Alex Goode as the heir apparent.

Munster have received a boost ahead of their Champions Cup quarter-final against French heavyweights Toulon as injury doubts Simon Zebo and Andrew Conway have been declared fit.

Leinster started the season with 14 players who could conceivably feature in their back row and yet they badly need three of their most prominent practitioners to return to fitness in time for Sunday’s European quarter-final against Saracens.

Ireland’s Cricket World Cup qualifier against Afghanistan is playing away on the TV in the background as Rob Ryan sits in the Clanna Gael Fontenoy clubhouse in Dublin, gripping a hurley, and holding court on all things American football.

Ciarán Ó Raghallaigh picks an Irish XV comprising of the 2009 Grand Slam team and the team that will chase that title on Saturday. 

Devin Toner has never been one to get above himself.

Of all the medals claimed, the caps won and the other accolades that came his way, none say as much about Jamie Heaslip the player so much as the pair of nominations he received for World Player of the Year.

It may have escaped many people’s notice that, as word emerged yesterday of Jamie Heaslip’s decision to retire from the game he had graced at the highest level for a decade, the Scarlets were announcing the end of another rugby career.

Nestled at the end of the second paragraph of the IRFU’s official statement on Jamie Heaslip’s retirement was the fact that the Leinster No 8 had appeared 95 times for his country and played the full 80 minutes for 72 of them.

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Fine margins, this fixture has been determined by them time and time again over the past decade and everything points to a similar scenario when Ireland and Wales lock horns once more in Dublin this afternoon.

Joe Schmidt spoke yesterday about how some of his players might have been spooked during Ireland’s World Cup quarter-final defeat to Argentina in 2015, but Dan Leavy doesn’t fit the bill as the type to take fright on the field.