Panama coach Hernan Dario Gomez isn’t in the business of sugarcoating the truth before his team makes history by playing in its first World Cup.

I’m not sure if I ever noticed before that Father’s Day falls around Bloomsday.

It is the exhaustive work required to secure those points, with tries even harder to come by, that leave Ireland exposed, says Donal Lenihan.

Ireland boss Joe Schmidt has thrown down the gauntlet to his Six Nations champions to emulate the heroes of 1979 by winning a Test series in Australia when they face the Wallabies for a third and decisive time on Saturday.

World Rugby U20 Championship: Ireland 39 - Japan 33: Irish coach Noel McNamara believes that many of his squad will go on to professional careers and represent the national senior side despite a miserable fortnight at the World Rugby U20 Championship.

Argentina 1 Iceland 1: The interval was almost upon us at Spartak Stadium and Jorge Sampaoli’s stress levels had long since moved beyond critical. That’s actually where they started.

The 2018 World Cup is barely up and running but already we know that the 2026 edition will be jointly hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, writes Liam Mackey

Cork City will continue to look over their shoulders as Dundalk produced another demolition of Derry City at the Brandywell, the Lilywhites rarely moving into top gear to remain one point adrift at the business end of the Premier Division.

The lads from Sky, who landed on a mercy mission Thursday, reminded me why I’ll never go to a World Cup, writes Larry Ryan

To prepare for his job of keeping Lionel Messi quiet in Iceland’s opening game of the World Cup, defender Birkir Saevarsson worked as a salt-packer at a warehouse in an industrial zone of Reykjavik, the Icelandic capital. 

Brazil have spent four years trying to atone for its last World Cup match, the calamitous 7-1 defeat as hosts by Germany.

The ideal scenario for the club where Paul Pogba played football as a kid might go something like this: The France midfielder shines so brightly at the World Cup that a money-no-object club — for argument’s sake, let’s say Real Madrid — decides that it cannot live without him and pays a nine-figure fee to shake him loose from Manchester United.

If ever there was a microcosm of the battle for hearts and minds in Australian sport, then today’s fare is it.

It is difficult to imagine Ireland’s season being remembered as anything but an unheralded success after a Six Nations Triple Crown, Championship and Grand Slam was secured on the back a 12-Test winning run.

It is a triumph to either the human spirit or man’s capacity for self-delusion that the tournament continues to be the repository of dreams...tune in, tun on and drop out, writes Michael Clifford

When does an underdog need to stop behaving like an underdog?

‘Alie told often enough becomes the truth.’

There have been some remarkable stories in the World Cup over the years but this one you really couldn’t make up.