Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp admits it was “not nice” shelling out £75m (€84m) for Virgil van Dijk but says he had little option in current market conditions.

A challenging 2017 for Irish golf demanded innovation on the course — and in the clubhouse. Kevin Markham canvassed nine clubs for their yearly report card.

There were many treats over the last four days in Ireland and Britain, but for me the biggest star to emerge was Willie Mullins’ Footpad in a Grade 1 at Leopardstown on Tuesday, writes Pat Keane.

This week I’m sharing my take on the good, the bad and the ugly of 2017.

Most of us would be thrilled to be granted the one wish — and even a genie only offers three — but Irish sport is a vast tent that covers many tribes so here are 10 stories we hope to see written in the 12 months to come.

In Ireland’s time of need, Paul McGrath firmly believes Seán Maguire can arrest the worrying firepower deficit.

John Fallon looks back on Irish soccer’s 2017

Tottenham 4 Stoke 0: Harry Kane’s emergence in the Tottenham Hotspur side inspired chants of ‘He’s one of our own’, with the player accorded cult hero status almost immediately.

Ronan O’Gara served as chaperone when Conor Murray stepped blinking into the white heat of Test rugby on an August night in Bordeaux six years ago and the Munster scrum-half has returned that favour more than a few times since.

They sat side by side on the same subs bench on a summer’s evening long ago, father and son far from the madding crowd in the English countryside.

Whether you’re a French fan or an Irish fan, this weekend you are going to have to fork out to enjoy the Six Nations clash in Dublin.

Two weeks since the last round of Six Nations games and Ireland’s annihilation of Italy in Rome all but ensured that the vacuum would be at least partly filled by the sort of big picture debate that is only ever held in the absence of any live distractions.

Donnacha Ryan is, as is often the case, in jovial form as he parks his considerable frame into what looks like the smallest of chairs at Carton House. Just named in Ireland’s second row for today’s Six Nations battle with France, the conversation is cheery and wide-ranging.

Here's your evening update.

IN a world often too glum, in a world where scepticism is increasingly a plausible reaction to nearly any suggestion, we use escapism as a refuge. We use it as a safety valve so we might not, as Col Brandon threatened in Sense and Sensibility, run mad. 

Exotic, crazy, colourful Marrakesh, so many intriguing cultural experiences but for the cook it’s a brave new world of tagines, cous cous, pastilla, meschoi, briouts, tangia.

Leicester City could make another attempt to lure Martin O’Neill from the Republic of Ireland hotseat after sacking title-winning boss Claudio Ranieri 

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