Because this seems to be a week (or two) of Peak Hurling, I thought it might be the ideal time to use the game in order to reenact a great old George Plimpton piece.

Do a Wikipedia search for ‘Joe Schmidt’ and you won’t be hit with a bio and pic of Ireland’s current rugby union coach, writes Brendan O’Brien.

If sportswriting was a sport itself, then America would dominate it something like it dominates basketball.

George Plimpton, the self-deprecating American author of Paper Lion and a patron to Philip Roth, Jack Kerouac and countless other writers, has died, aged 76.