GREEK club Larissa have announced their intention to take legal action against the Football Association of Wales over the appointment of Chris Coleman as Wales manager.

NORTHAMPTON have dropped winger Chris Ashton amid rumours of a training ground row with director of rugby Jim Mallinder.

LEINSTER coach Joe Schmidt adopted the role of chief cheerleader for Luke Fitzgerald yesterday but refused to be drawn on the wing’s latest international setback.

LEINSTER coach Joe Schmidt is hoping Rhys Ruddock will decide to stay in Dublin as reports persist the young and versatile back-row plans a switch south to Munster.

Ireland is a progressive society, but deficient in gender equality when it comes to electing our politicians, writes Kathleen Lynch

AT just 24 years of age, Cian Healy is still something of a beginner when it comes to the art of propping but the Clontarf man has nonetheless matured since his return from World Cup duties in New Zealand.

PAUL O’CONNELL’S decision to commit to Munster until the end of the 2013/14 season is about the only bit of good news to come the province’s way over the last few weeks.

A DOCUMENTARY on the only Irishman to manage Manchester United has been shortlisted for Best Sports Programme at this year’s Irish Film and Television Awards (IFTAs).

CONTROVERSIAL World Cup official Alain Rolland will receive no special treatment when he returns to Wales to referee the Scarlets’ crunch Heineken Cup encounter with Northampton Saints.

MARIO BALOTELLI has thrown his future at Manchester City into fresh doubt by revealing that he has no friends in England and would move back to Italy if he had to switch clubs.

DECLAN KIDNEY, Warren Gatland and Andy Robinson will all effectively be on trial during the forthcoming Six Nations to be head coach of the 2013 British and Irish Lions.

DCU professor Dr Niall Moyna has warned the GAA is in danger of shortening inter-county players’ careers if it doesn’t regulate its fixtures calendar.

IT was derby day in Barcelona on Sunday just as it was in Manchester.

LIONEL MESSI was last night awarded the FIFA Ballon d’Or for the third successive year.

IRELAND are hoping to have a new team manager in place before the start of the RBS 6 Nations Championship next month but are still assessing the candidates to succeed Paul McNaughton.

UNBEATEN in 14 games, nine points clear in the RaboDirect Pro12, six ahead of their nearest rival in Pool 3 of the Heineken Cup.

Seventy-three people were killed and at least 1,000 injured on Wednesday after a soccer pitch invasion in the Egyptian city of Port Said, in what a minister called the biggest disaster in the nation’s soccer history.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger hopes the Gunners’ defensive injury crisis may be easing after full-back Kieran Gibbs returned to full training, although not in time for tonight’s Premier League trip to Bolton.

Declan Kidney will name a team today ready to cast off Ireland’s bitter memories of a World Cup quarter-final exit by playing expansive rugby in their Six Nations opener against Wales on Sunday.

There is a strange sense of Groundhog Day about Ireland’s opening two fixtures in this season’s RBS Six Nations Championship.