IF THE European Rugby Cup organisers were embarrassed at how the various Heineken Cup pools panned out, they should have been running for cover after what transpired at the Ricoh Arena on Saturday evening.

WHEN it comes to the increasingly vexed question of club versus country, Arsene Wenger continues to play the philosophical equivalent of a game of two halves: spot on half the time, way off the mark the rest.

WICKLOW SFC finalists Rathnew are ‘livid’ at the decision to deny them a potential place in the Leinster club football championship.

DRAWS are not always deflating.

JUST two weeks after claiming he wanted to leave Chelsea, Didier Drogba is set to upset his employers once again with the release of a DVD chronicling his life story in which he admits he wanted to fail the medical he took before he joined the London club and was “disgusted” when he eventually put pen to paper at Stamford Bridge.

CHILDREN’S Minister Brendan Smith has been called upon to set up a whistle-blowers’ hotline for parents who are concerned about rogue childcare facilities.

JUANDE RAMOS is understood to be a man of few words. But the Spaniard is already fluent enough to get a simple message across to the players he has inherited from Martin Jol and whom he saw in action for the first time yesterday.

ARSENE WENGER hopes Arsenal’s battling performance at Liverpool has convinced more people that his side are serious contenders for the Premier League title.

CAMERON JEROME insisted Steve Bruce must remain as Birmingham manager if Carson Yeung completes his protracted takeover of the club.

Bohemians 0 Cork City 2

CHELSEA are English football’s answer to a cold shower.

ONE of the minor joys of European or World Cup tournaments is the way they throw up the most unlikely alliances between different nations.

Cork Constitution 12 Garryowen 12

Bourgoin 24 Ulster 17

Montenegro U-21 1 Rep of Ireland U-21 0

ON THE BASIS that Munster rarely perform poorly in successive games, the defeat and subsequent lessons learned from the loss to Leinster last Friday may prove timely.

TOP GAA whistle blowers Dave Coldrick and Diarmuid Kirwan favour an overhaul of the “ticking” system in hurling and football and would be keen on a reintroduction of sin-binning.

CORK’S reputation as a Munster rugby fortress crumbled last night as Leinster ended their 22-year hoodoo on Rebel territory.

FOR Denis Leamy, the burning desire to beat Leinster dates back to the time he first pulled on a Munster shirt in a Schools inter-provincial back in the late 1990s.

RANGERS’ bid to qualify for the knockout stages of the Champions League will go right to the wire after they lost in Stuttgart last night.