Towards the end of last season, Johnny McNicholl asked himself a rhetorical question: “Am I Welsh? It’s a tough question to answer. I don’t know.”

Functionality, style and a little bit of nostalgia make up Esther N McCarthy’s list this week.

IT MAY have been Peter Stringer’s opposite number, Samoa’s Kahn Fotualii, who claimed the man-of-the-match award, but Irish players and management were effusive in their praise of their scrum-half in the aftermath of their Test win.

Fiji won the first Adelaide Sevens beating Samoa 21-7 in the final to stretch their lead to 10 points over their closest rivals in the race to the IRB Sevens World Series crown.

Spanish police seized nearly five tons of cocaine aboard a fishing vessel and arrested 20 people in the culmination of a six-month probe, officials said.