The emotion on Nathan Breen’s face as he stood on the Hogan Stand podium on Saturday said it all. Looking down on his Beaufort team-mates, the joy of the captain who had moved to the home of his father after spending his first 13 years in Wales was unbridled.

Tipperary knew the implications of defeat here. Injury-ravaged and with only one point from a possible six, not to mention upcoming trips to Armagh and Newbridge, relegation to Division 3 would have been near unavoidable.

Quite what impact Saturday’s Murrayfield result has on the next time Ireland meet Scotland in September’s key opening World Cup pool game in Yokohama remains to be seen but, right now, Joe Schmidt has more immediate problems to address, writes Donal Lenihan.

Kerry’s dominance of Munster football has seen the province’s championships lose their spark, accepts Munster Council CEO Kieran Leddy.

Munster’s season can now truly begin. The drama, tension and excitement that this pool stage of the Heineken Champions Cup has provided may well have kept us gripped, absorbed and thrilled through the past four months but negotiating it and coming out the other side with a ticket punched to the knockout stages is the province’s oft-stated minimum requirement.

There wasn’t much harmony between Tyrone and Armagh, who breathed new life into an old rivalry during a fiery Dr McKenna Cup final on Saturday night, yet afterwards the managers were united in delight at the scrapping of the handpass rule.

Irish golf sang with one voice at the weekend as Shane Lowry buried the demons of his 2016 US Open disappointment and saluted the GUI and the ILGU for voting overwhelmingly for the creation of one governing body.

UCD were indebted to a brace of late frees from Ronan Hayes as they recued a share of the spoils with NUIG after their entertaining Fitzgibbon Cup Group A encounter at David Billings Park.

A Bulgarian circus worker who had sex with an underage girl in Cork has received a prison sentence of two years with six months suspended.

No complaints, said a member of the Midleton backroom as he and his colleagues walked into the Páirc Uí Chaoimh tunnel yesterday, and a Cork senior hurling county final has rarely been summed up as succinctly.

A strong second-half performance, lit up by the individual excellence of Sean Morrissey, saw Bennettsbridge end a 44-year wait for a place in the Kilkenny senior hurling championship final.

Johann van Graan praised Keith Earls’s selflessness in putting his side first after ruling himself out of Munster’s European clash at Exeter just before kick-off.

Harry Arter never wanted, nor asked for, an apology from Roy Keane over the bust-up that prompted the Cardiff City midfielder to step away from the international game last month.

Almost five years into his reign, at a cost of €10m in wages, Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane are, apparently, laying building blocks for the Ireland squad.

Martin O’Neill can’t have been all that happy with Age Hareide’s take on last year’s World Cup play-off second leg when the Danish coach sarcastically thanked the Irish manager for offering Christian Eriksen the freedom of Dublin.

A couple of momentary mental lapses couldn’t stop reigning Limerick and Munster champions Na Piarsaigh reaching a seventh Limerick senior final in 10 seasons.

Imokilly retained the Cork senior hurling title after a ten-point win over Midleton today.

Martin O’Neill has described the 0-0 draw with Denmark as a “building block” as Ireland now prepare for the visit to Dublin on Tuesday of a Welsh team which put his side to the sword in Cardiff last month.

Cork Con scored a last-gasp try to beat rivals UCC 18-20 last night at the Mardyke in the second round of the All-Ireland League.

Ryder Cup veteran Phil Mickelson hopes his long association with the event did not end in a watery grave, but accepts he may have played his last match for the United States.