This should have been the most awkward of house calls for a Kildare side that has found form to be a fleeting companion this spring but Laois ultimately proved to be the most welcoming of neighbours.

Where Galway look forward to a second knockout fixture on home soil in the space of a week, Cork’s calendar is worryingly bare.

You’d suck the top off an entire packet of pencils trying to settle on the most appropriate opening par after a night, and a game, such as this.

The echoes you heard resounding through the last seven days? Those were from the whistles at NHL Division 1A games last weekend.

A few weeks back I saw a post on Facebook: World War 3 — Liverpool 4. It made me laugh out loud.

Defending champions UCC booked their place in the Fitzgibbon Cup semi-final at the Mardyke tonight. The result was decided long before the final whistle, Charlie McGuckin getting in for a UCD goal in stoppage time.

Three generations of PGA Tour commissioners were gathered in the same room on Tuesday before the flagship tour event. If they convened to recruit Jay Monahan’s eventual successor, the unanimous choice of the moment would be the reigning Players champion Rory McIlroy.

Our columnist examines the reasons behind the ever-increasing tendency of county players to jump ship to the USA in the middle of the championship season

WHEN you write in a university, you plan your work in months.

Making a welcome return to Cork last Friday was acclaimed American saxophonist Joshua Redman who, along with bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Chris Hutchinson, delivered a polished performance to the delight of a near-capacity audience at Triskel Christchurch.

One of the reasons Dublin were spared the wrath of the football police in the aftermath of last year’s bizarre All-Ireland semi-final was that they had already proven their attacking credentials a few weeks earlier in a devastating display against Tyrone.

This powerful Tom Murphy play, produced as part of the DruidMurphy trilogy, is a gripping, unsettling and tragic piece of drama that shines a light on the effects of emigration on a brawling criminal Irish family.

IT has become almost axiomatic that the Cork senior football panel is by far the strongest in the country. We didn’t need them to win the league and championship double last year to inform us of that but there were signs right throughout last season that their cliché strength-in depth was being used to telling and tactical effect to swing matches their way in the last 10 or 15 minutes.

JUST as the season was moving nicely into top gear without too much controversy, along come a moment of grand larceny, that robbed little Louth of their first Leinster SFC crown in over half a century.

I DON’T know about you, but I’m beginning to worry now before big games about the result.

LAST Saturday, in my capacity as President of the GAA in Belgium, I attended the very first Euro League Tournament to be hosted by the Association’s arm in the country at Louven.

IN HIS recently published autobiography, Brian Cody states the following: “I’m regularly asked which success has given me the most satisfaction during the years I have been lucky enough to manage Kilkenny.

ON Sunday I had the privilege of attending an intriguing club decider in Killarney – the Kerry IFC final.

I WAS sufficiently infuriated by our most recent failure to find the back of the net on Saturday, to feel like making my frustrations known at the final whistle. Nevertheless, I wasn’t about to join in with the loud chorus of boos, that saw the Gunners departing the field with the sound of our own ‘supporters’ anger ringing in their ears.

TAKING advantage of Sunday’s respite from this arctic winter, I jumped on my motorbike for the brief four-mile trip from London N5 to N17. It meant that I was able to park up directly opposite White Hart Lane and following the final whistle, I was out of there and back home in time to have my feet up for the kick-off of the afternoon’s second sitting from Upton Park.