Everyone knows what it is to cycle a bike up a hill. The burn of the lungs and the ache in legs is a glorious, painful expression of what it is to be alive.

It is not often that the most powerful administrator in any sport acknowledges that the supposedly central premise on which his organisation rests is not what it seems to be, writes Paul Rouse.

NATIONALISM allows people to wrap murder in a flag and present it as war in a just cause. And it allows the ideologues of that cause to take history, scrub away the bits that do not fit the new fairytale, and write a version more fitted to their aims.

Sunday evening began at 5pm when the Detroit Pistons played a thrilling match against the Denver Nuggets.

This year marks a landmark year in the history of ice hockey in Ireland.

That this is a big league season for the hurlers and footballers of Cork is stating the obvious.

There are three Dubs at a table talking about the greatest sporting moment of the last decade.

On April 15, 1989, in homes and in pubs all across Ireland, people sat down to watch Liverpool play Nottingham Forest in the semi-final of the FA Cup.

There’s a lot to be said about the autobiography of Eoin Larkin, the Kilkenny hurler.

It cannot be easy to play at the top level of English soccer for more than six decades. But the great Roy Race is still going strong.

Is Jim Gavin the greatest Gaelic football manager of all time?

Paul Rouse on the changing culture of The Sunday Game and why now faces its biggest challenge

There is no denying that Irish politicians, in recent weeks, have said things about immigrants to this country that betray an appalling ignorance — as well as a lack of basic humanity.

Paul Rouse The extraordinary sums of money that now swirl around the Premier League in England are driven by television.

You won’t have many in Donegal arguing Declan Bonner should be talking about things other than Sky Sports this week.

Paul Rouse believes the GAA calendar is the "single greatest issue" facing the organisation.

Podge Collins didn’t take too kindly to our claim last week that the modern sliotar is too light.

It’s summer and Sunday evenings in local pubs are dominated by hurling talk. Common themes everywhere I would expect; the player that isn’t up to that level and they’ve ‘always known it’, the new player who proved them right, ‘they have IT’, the mad decisions on the line, and always, the awe at the moments of brilliance in all hurling games.

People often ask me why I recommend books in the corner of this page, and I have some stock responses.

Joe Brolly and Jarlath Burns are strange bedfellows.

The experience of going to Premier League soccer matches in England in off-the-shelf modern stadiums is often a synthetic one.

Here's your lunchtime bulletin.

Last week in this paper, Paul Rouse analysed the GAA’s ticket price increase with his customary skill. Offering a wider context to those price increases was his trump card, because it deployed one of the GAA’s strongest core beliefs against itself: that it is a game, or games, of the people, writes Michael Moynihan.

Here's your lunchtime bulletin.

The draw for this season’s FA Cup took place last Monday — but did anybody really care, asks Paul Rouse.

Why do GAA matches end up in fights? asks Paul Rouse

Acknowledging that many of its members fought in the British army does not diminish the GAA’s contribution to Irish society or the fact that many others of its members fought in 1916 and in the War of Independence, writes Paul Rouse

Eir Sport have announced the longlist of 23 nominees for the eir Sport Book of the Year award.

Two books by pioneering female sports stars are included on the six-book shortlist.

You can find hurling in the most unexpected places, says Paul Rouse.

As a GAA journalist, PS O’Hegarty had a gift for being willing to say the hard thing, writes Paul Rouse.

Watching some of the scenes from recent GAA matches makes you wonder whether those who take part in such events ever consider that what they are doing is probably criminal in nature and that they might also be found personally liable in compensation to any victim, writes Jack Anderson

Paul Rouse is an accidental academic, but a fascination with history deepened into a passion when it merged with his love of sport. His new book, ‘The Hurlers’, charts the birth of the modern game in that first All-Ireland final 131 years ago. He marvels at what a few visionary hurling men gave the country, but can’t help think that hurling has since failed at least half that country

The presence of players in the squad who grew up playing both GAA and rugby is a reminder of the changes in Irish society over recent decades, writes Paul Rouse.

Turlough O’Brien may have been a tad hyperbolic when he claimed the proposed rule changes to football are reflective of a 1940s mindset yearning for the days when players donned flat caps, but certainly the suggested place for such experimentation smacks of a mentality that’s anachronistic.

The things you find in university libraries are diverse and wonderful, writes Paul Rouse. There are now so many academic journals that it is as good as impossible not to find an article relating to any given subject.

There are things so obvious they should not need to be said, writes Paul Rouse

If I mention the race for the Áras, will you turn the page? You won’t? Many thanks.

Your morning bulletin.

As his name continues to be linked with the Mayo senior manager’s position, Westport have been given no indication that James Horan won’t be remaining on in charge of their senior team.

In a parallel universe yesterday’s All-Ireland U21 hurling final topped off an unforgettable season with a dazzling flourish, with Tipperary and Cork swapping sixty-odd scores on a baking summer’s day, maybe, as happened a couple of times in this year’s senior championship.