Mike Quirke gives his view of the lax protection given to some of the GAA’s top stars.

Nemo Rangers (Cork) 0-9 Clonmel Commercials (Tipperary) 1-7: “Unbelievable,” said Kevin Harney, mere seconds after writing his name into the annals of sporting history as the first Tipperary club footballer to hold aloft the Munster senior crown.

Tipperary 0-20 Limerick 0-17: A rousing finish from Tipperary – in which Liam Cahill’s charges hit four unanswered points in the final four minutes of action – put paid to Limerick’s Munster minor hurling three-in-a-row bid.

The clock read 58 minutes when thousands of jubilant Limerick supporters, having rolled down from the Ryan and Kinane Stands, occupied every blade of grass on either sideline at Semple Stadium.

Republic of Ireland 0 England 0: The good news: 20 years on from the Lansdowne riot, this meeting of Ireland and England in Dublin passed off without major incident.

“GOL! GOL! GOL-GOL-GOL-GOL!! HAMEZ MAKLAINES!!! GOL! GOL! GOL!!!!” Which is how George Hamilton might have sounded in Cardiff had he donned a Panama hat.

The first great GAA summer of controvassy — or conspóid, as we have decided it should be written, by rule — has finished up in the style to which we have rapidly become accustomed, writes Larry Ryan.

Don’t worry, I’m not expecting sympathy. The real cost of relegation comes when you see a flood of staff members with their lives packed into cardboard boxes that they pack into banged up old cars

Everybody accepts that the accused, and even the convicted, have the right to legal support, writes Terry Prone.

Even on the back of a painful hiding, one game into a new campaign might seem a bit too early to be talking about crisis.

HEINEKEN CUP POOL 6:

It’s a tragedy O’Grady never really got the time and space he needed in a management job

The signals being sent out to prospective whistleblowers are obvious, writes Michael Clifford.

In sport and in life, everybody wants to be like Eddy Merckx – the outrageously gifted Belgian cyclist whose natural talent and extra-terrestrial strength allowed him to brush aside his rivals with contemptuous ease.

ANOTHER summer gone by without me swimming with dolphins. All I can ever boast is swimming with jellyfish.

Northampton 7 Leinster 40

Ahead of the international trials in Ireland, Paul D’Alton goes sheep-herding with Con McGarry and his dog, Megan