Jackie Tyrrell faces a major fitness battle to be available for Sunday week’s All-Ireland SHC final although Brian Cody has allayed fears about Eoin Larkin’s thumb injury.

So the end came over tea and scones. That seems a rather genteel way to conclude the greatest career in Gaelic games rather than, say, a last, frenzied attack to overturn a two-point deficit, a desperate free launched into a hostile square.

At times, it’s with a polite or roundabout rebuttal that Brian Cody answers a question.

Good job Paul Grimley wasn’t in Langton’s the other night. He’d have been in grave danger of choking on his fillet steak.

Less than a week after Kilkenny’s shock July exit from the All-Ireland hurling championship Diarmuid O’Flynn travelled to the Marble City to gauge the reaction and mood in the county. In that famed hurling talk shop of Langton’s, former stars Noel Skehan, Michael Walsh and writer Enda McEvoy were in no mood to write obituaries about Brian Cody’s men.

Bruce Springsteen, with the full E Street Line Band line up, will bring his Wrecking Ball Weekender World Tour to a dramatic conclusion at Nowlan Park, Kilkenny, next summer.

When Brian Cody settled down with the press last week in Langton’s he looked relaxed.

WHERE did it all go right for Kilkenny?

IN the aftermath of last Sunday’s All-Ireland SHC final victory over Tipperary there was much talk about the new approach by Brian Cody and Kilkenny, how the Cats had become newly tactical.

AS usual before an All-Ireland final, I travelled to both competing counties this past week, to Hayes’ Hotel in Thurles and to the equally renowned Langton’s in Kilkenny.

IT wasn’t so much a case of the cat laughing as the cat scratching at last weekend’s Kilkenny Cat Laughs Festival after a controversial comic was booed off stage after making a reference to the Mr A underage sex case.

The ISEQ index of Irish shares was up 34.21 points to 7939.08 after morning trade today.

The bathroom suite manufacturer and distributor Qualceram Shires has reported a pre-tax loss of €5.1m for 2005.

Prolonged, heavy rain caused flooding from North Carolina to New Hampshire over the weekend, forcing hundreds of people to evacuate, knocking out electricity, weakening dams and making roads impassable.