RECLUSIVE author Annie Proulx arrived in Ireland yesterday to open a literary festival and will spend the next few days in west Cork researching a new book.

THAT infamous night in November, when Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland collided in a crucial World Cup qualifier at Windsor Park in 1993, stands out in the minds of many of us who were there as one of the most tension-filled and downright hostile sporting events we have ever attended.

SCOUSE poet Roger McGough once expressed the dilemma of the football fan who couldn’t decide where his loyalties lay on Merseyside: “I’d be bisexual if I had time for sex/‘cos it’s Goodison one week and Anfield the next.”