UNITED STATES midfielder Landon Donovan and coach Bob Bradley were both left without an answer as to why what would have been a winning goal in their dramatic World Cup Group C match against Slovenia yesterday was disallowed.

IT IS hard at the best of times to hear yourselves think at a World Cup stadium, with the drone of vuvuzelas matched by thumping rock music at half-time and after the games.

KILKENNY selector Martin Fogarty has warned that hurling’s top stars will retire from the game if players continue to be harshly sent off.

VUVUZELA horns will continue to drone on at World Cup matches despite warnings from experts that they can cause permanent hearing damage.

A WEEKEND pregnant with promise and expectation for Irish rugby was terminated brutally and conclusively in north-eastern Spain yesterday.

IF this is a sign of things to come later in the summer, bring it on!

HEAVY breathing phone calls have been par for the course for estate agent Christy Ryan these past few weeks – they’ve been mobile calls, made to him, by walkers doing the promenade around Cork’s Lough.

He’s put his rugby days behind him, locked them down and thrown away the key, but before Munster and Leinster began their European rugby odyssey, one Cork man already had a Heineken Cup medal to boast of. Not that he would. Brian Roche spoke to Adrian Russell

“THE Translator” returned to the Nou Camp last night, inflicting a staggering 3-2 aggregate defeat upon Barcelona after playing with only 10 men for over an hour and generating simmering controversy before bringing Inter Milan to the brink of their first European crown since 1965.

GAA PRESIDENT Christy Cooney yesterday rejected the suggestion that referees have begun to take a more lenient stance over the controversial handpass rule.

NOW that the silverware has been distributed for a variety of tournaments all over Europe a period of quiet reflection and planning will commence for next season.

RTÉ says that the decision to delay Sunday’s Munster SHC game was a direct result of a similar situation last year, when an overlap between games meant the early stages of another Munster hurling championship game wasn’t broadcast.

THE only time Giovanni Trapattoni ever mentions politics in public, it’s always in the context of football and invariably in the dismissive tone of a veteran who has reluctantly had to come to terms with a modern game besieged by spoofers, spinners, money-men and purveyors of industrial quantities of red tape.

ASSUMPTIONS.

I FANCIED Down to win yesterday in Ballybofey.

Republic of Ireland 3 Algeria 0

THE minor footballers of New York and Galway gave each another more than the shirts of their backs after last night’s Connacht championship clash at Pearse Stadium.

OLD TRAFFORD has staged some memorable title parties in recent years.

ALEX FERGUSON has played down fears about Wayne Rooney’s fitness ahead of this summer’s World Cup.

WEST HAM manager Gianfranco Zola ended the season of turmoil at Upton Park by admitting he had lost some of his love for football.