If ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon’ is indeed Michael Bay's final entry in the Hasbro toy-inspired franchise, as he has repeatedly intimated, then it is a fitting swan song for a director whose lust - and gift - for spectacle remains unmatched.

Leonard Nimoy will come out of retirement for ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon’.

JIMMY Mangan’s Rudi Trucker indicated that he’s set for another productive hunter chase campaign this season by sluicing home in the lady riders open at yesterday’s North Tipperary Foxhounds point-to-point meeting at Nenagh, the only hunt racing fixture to take place over the weekend.

Tonight the Airtricity League kicks off after a 12-round close-season that left even Roddy ‘Queensbury Rules’ Collins punch-drunk. After all the off-field attrition – though the battle scars are yet to heal – a football match will break out.

CHILDREN have only started back at school, but Christmas, it seems, is just around the corner.

ADRIAN MAGUIRE and Colman Sweeney are a solid combination when joining forces and they were on the mark again at Tramore yesterday when Optimus Prime landed the Directors’ Chase.

FORGET The Past, third behind War Of Attrition and Hedgehunter in the Cheltenham Gold Cup last year, squeezed home a head in front Of Light On The Broom in the Thurles Chase at the Tipperary track yesterday.

Technology will dominate children’s wish lists this Christmas, experts predicted today.

“BRING us back a parrot!” was the cry of canal bank Dublin urchins years ago as they waved to barges seen heading to imagined exotic destinations. Like Meath. Or Kildare.

JESSICA Harrington's Hide The Evidence completed a hat-trick with a fine front-running display in the INH Stallion Owners' EBF Novice Hurdle at Cork yesterday.

CONSIDERING the dreadful weather for much of the week, the hugely successful seven-day Listowel Festival was completed in style yesterday, with the overall attendance a highly satisfactory 87,000.

DECLAN McDONOGH struck yet another major blow in his bid to be champion jockey for the first time when landing a spectacular treble at Listowel yesterday.

DESPITE the fact the ground is going to be far from ideal, Davenport Democrat gets the nap to land the Southampton Goodwill Chase at this afternoon’s Listowel meeting — if it survives a 7.30am inspection.

NOEL Meade’s Khetaam, in the Menapia Classic Mouldings Hurdle, rates the safest wager at Wexford this evening.

MICHAEL HOURIGAN went through an agonising twenty minutes or so at Cork on Saturday.