AS Manchester United’s players filed into the plush new dressingrooms at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field on Saturday afternoon, they could congratulate themselves on a job well done.

AS Paddy Christie waxed lyrical on the Lower Hogan Stand, the Laois players lined up below him desperate for it all to be over.

Liverpool 0 Graz AK 1

THEY may be out of the permanent tsb Cork County SHC, losing 2-16 to 3-8, but new kids on the block, Delanys, came of age at Páirc Uí Rinn on Saturday, giving champions Blackrock a searching test.

MARTIN O’NEILL yesterday told Celtic supporters to hold back on the hero-worshipping of returning legend Henrik Larsson once the first whistle blows in their Champions League showdown.

AN HISTORIC day for Bride Rovers, winning the inaugural Munster Intermediate Club hurling title at Kilmallock yesterday - coming five months after they captured their first Cork IHC title last October.

THOSE who complained that this World Cup lacked drama got their answer yesterday. It is typical of the Irish that they should provide it.

IN THE fevered build-up to Saturday’s Rule 42 vote, many newspapers chose to illustrate what a yes vote might mean by superimposing an image of Roy Keane over a picture of Croke Park.

OWEN MULLIGAN haslabelled Tyrone’s first-halfperformance against Kerry onSunday a “disgrace”.

GEORDIES are a strange breed; Newcastle only have to announce the signing of a second-rate player and for whom they have paid well over the odds and they all descend on St James’s Park in their thousands, loud and invariably bare-chested (and that’s just the women), telling all and sundry that this is the signing that will change their fortunes.

HE will be familiar to regular Irish visitors to the Masters but for the purposes of this article he will remain incognito.

TRY as he might, Ephie Fitzgerald was simply unable to hide his frustration.

THIS might have been the most dramatic game on the most dramatic day of the most dramatic Championship season in living memory, but Nigel Pearson showed no sign of being perturbed.

“THIS community has had more than its fair share of tragedy, so people really don’t know what to do any more.”

GARETH THOMAS will captain Wales in Saturday’s RBS 6 Nations clash with England after Stephen Jones was forced to pull out with a fractured bone in his wrist.