Leinster salvaged real pride despite losing after extra time at the Velodrome in Marseille yesterday. 

Obviously I’m biased but, for me, it wasfantastic to see all the old Munster values and traditions were still there.

It can’t be easy filling in for arguably the greatest Irish player of a generation but Brendan Macken has not done a bad job covering for Brian O’Driscoll this past fortnight.

Munster’s list of prospective backs coaches was reduced by one yesterday after Canterbury confirmed Rob Penney’s assistant Tabai Matson had been appointed as his replacement at the New Zealand province.

A second Irish village has discovered a parish register with records of the ancestors of Barack Obama.

WHEN President Obama goes to Monegall he should be told that not only is he following in the footsteps of Presidents Kennedy and Reagan in visiting the town where some of his ancestors came from but that he is also distantly related to them.

BEING the first black president of the United States and of Kenyan origin, perhaps the most unexpected connection was that a man with such an exotic name, in the most powerful job in the world, would have links to a small village in Co Offaly.

“THIS is a first for both of us,” Barack Obama said of his meeting with Brian Cowen, “and with a little bit of luck, I’m sure we’ll get it right”.

IN June 2003 in an interview with a Sunday newspaper, Siobhán Kearney spoke movingly of her love of her new life on the Spanish holiday island of Majorca where she and her husband, Brian, had bought a hotel just six months earlier.

THE jurors in the trial of a Dublin man accused of murdering his wife two years ago were yesterday told to be cold, analytical and dispassionate when reaching a verdict.

The jurors in the trial of a Dublin man accused of murdering his wife two years ago were today told to be cold, analytical, and dispassionate when reaching a verdict.