For what Joe Brolly considered a phoney war, yesterday’s first game produced its share of mean hits and collateral damage. Nearly all of it in the studio.

Perhaps, in hindsight, fortune took too many hostages.

THEY’RE clocking up thousands of miles as they complete their journey from England to Africa — and five migrating cuckoos fitted with tiny tracking devices are providing new information which could help explain a sharp decline in the number of the birds in Britain, scientists said Friday.

ALL THIS serious business must be catching on. For all the sombre mood, the discussion of being in the last-chance saloon and one wrong move away from ending it all, we could well have stumbled across a repeat of Questions and Answers pondering the budget yesterday, when it was in fact Michael Lyster and co chatting about the International Rules Series.