SO THERE I was earlier this week, waiting on the platform for the Dart out to the Ireland team camp in Malahide, when the Howth train pulled in. While everyone else was boarding, I continued to read my paper until an unfamiliar voice suddenly hailed me. It was the driver, leaning out his window.

MANCHESTER CITY and Shamrock Rovers have taken very different routes to supremacy in their respective leagues — indeed City are still some way short of their own summit.

XAVI HERNANDEZ, the world’s finest midfielder, remembers the advice he received when, aged 10, he made a first tentative journey to La Masia, the 18th century farmhouse in the shadow of the Camp Nou where FC Barcelona school their kids.