Paul Rouse: Sport is our antidote to rhetoric and cruelty

It can be seen around athletics tracks and soccer fields, in GAA dressing rooms and in the gyms and pools of Ireland. In these shared spaces, people from different parts of the world (and their children) can find a common language and a common love

Close-up of female soccer team stacking hands in the field

The two Ranelagh Strongmen are at it again.

Jim O’Callaghan and Michael McDowell have followed strikingly similar paths through their south Dublin lives: Fee-paying school with the Jesuits in Gonzaga, down to UCD, back across the city to study at the King’s Inns and to work as barristers, appointed senior counsel, then on into the cabinet in pursuit of political power from a base in Ranelagh.