Germany coach Joachim Löw has revealed Bastian Schweinsteiger is fully fit and ready to start tonight’s Euro 2012 semi-final against Italy.

Football these days is full of greedy young men and grasping young women, players and their WAGs, a set of people who inhabit a world of their own, utterly separate from the world of their fans.

Any theory which espouses the view that the less well off don’t stand a chance against the nation’s fat cats is always going to curry favour with a certain audience.

A major dilemma exists and needs to be urgently addressed regarding a central and fixed location for all future provincial rugby training.

There might be 22 players on the pitch when Portugal take on Spain tonight but there is only one man all of Donetsk appears to be talking about — Cristiano Ronaldo.

Unlike four years ago, Spain haven’t exactly started this tournament in exhilarating fashion.

France’s ‘1987 Generation’, so-called after the year of their birth, had been tipped to lead Les Bleus to a repeat of the team’s success at Euro 2000.

Teenage star Leona Maguire is in position at Carnoustie to grab a prominent place in the matchplay stages of the Ladies British Open Amateur Championship after yesterday’s second qualifying round.

Irish crews make up nine of the 133 overseas boats in a record entry of 499 crews at this year’s Henley Royal Regatta, beginning today.

Sean O’Brien insists that Declan Kidney and his Ireland management team remain the best men for the job of driving the national 15 forward despite last Saturday’s record 60-0 defeat to New Zealand in the third Test.

The cold seeps deep into our bones, and darkness begins to roll across Lambourn, the small village which calls itself the Valley of the Racehorse, but Tony McCoy is already high in the sunlit hills of his latest ambition.

The catwalk queens have had their day. Today Aintree reverts to a venerable old battlefield of dreams and punting pin-stickers as experts-for-the-day have an annual flutter on the Grand National.

For decades Paul Durcan has mapped our Free State as it descended into Hell. No other poet was so well-prepared for this prolonged and bitter cartography. Thomas McCarthy on his latest collection

In the wake of their Thomond Park defeat at the hands of Ulster, Ronan O’Gara has admitted that Munster are no longer the heavyweight force they were by describing the current squad as just “average to good”.

Giovanni Trapattoni admits he still has a couple of big selection decisions to make before he decides on his 23-man squad for the European Championship finals.

Let’s take a quick head count of Munster’s starting XV against Ulster in the Heineken Cup quarter-final.

The imperious Big Buck’s created a slice of racing history at Aintree yesterday in the BGC Liverpool Hurdle – and it never looked in any doubt.

Ronan O’Gara hopes Munster rugby chiefs will “trawl the world” for the best possible successor to Tony McGahan, who departs as the province’s director of coaching at the end of this season.

Shay Given admits the Republic of Ireland are drawn in the ‘group of death’ at Euro 2012 but is relishing the daunting challenge.

Ronan O’Gara was frank as ever yesterday, stating plainly that Munster simply didn’t take their opportunities in the Heineken Cup defeat to Ulster last Sunday.