EVERY WEEK WE flick back through the best of the newspapers, websites and blogs.
1. “’The bottom line is that Ireland screwed up the preparation in 2007 and all of us concerned have to acknowledge that,’ says O’Sullivan with the air of a man who wishes he could turn the clock back. ‘We played just two international games in the run-in, when we should have played four. And of those two games I put out virtually an Ireland A team against Scotland. That just is not the way to go about it anymore. We got the run-in badly wrong. There was too much training and not enough competitive rugby, may of our players were undercooked and you just can’t afford that at a World Cup.’”
Now he tells us! Former Ireland manager Eddie O’Sullivan admits the mistakes that were made before the last tournament in the Telegraph.
2. “I start to take a turn for the worse. Dave and Cody carry me outside where I fall flat on my face and start puking. People are taking pictures and videos, and Jared tries to fight some guys who are taking videos of me. They pile me into a cab and leave Jared at the bar because he’s found some kids he wants to play football with. Davy and Cody tell the cab driver to take us to the closest hotel, which is the Arena Hotel, in walking distance of HP Pavilion. I fall out of the cab and Davy goes to get a hotel room while Cody sits with me in the parking lot. They pull me into the hotel where I collapse again and start convulsing. The lady at the hotel says she is calling the hospital, and Davy and Cody agree with her assessment.”
One Deadspin reader pieces together a spur-of-the-moment trip from Vancouver to San Jose (they’re in different countries!) for Game 4 of the NHL Western Conference Finals. A cautionary tale.
3.“All this role-model stuff has always been garbage and ramped-up sportswriter libretto. As Kate Buford pointed out in Native American Son, her superb biography of Jim Thorpe, the mythic role of the athlete stretches back more than a hundred years to the tales of Frank Merriwell and his personification of the athlete as “selfless, smart, noble….” But even in the early 1900s the myth was false, Buford noted; athletes for such holier-than-thou institutions as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton were openly recruited with financial inducements, regularly missed class, and got a share of the gate receipts depending on how their team did.”
If it’s wrong to love Buzz Bissinger, I don’t want to be write. Always prone to going thermo nuclear on Twitter, he recently insisted his writing is now terrible. He didn’t use that word. His columns in the Daily Beast are consistently great however. 
4."Picture the scene – it’s the press box in O’Connor Park, Tullamore. Half-time between Offaly and Wexford in the Leinster senior football championship, and I fancy a quick cuppa. On offer – one last remaining slice of chocolate swiss roll. Between me and the confectionery – one former Taoiseach, out supporting his native county. I’ll see you your Universal Social Charge, Brian, and I’ll raise you one Central European chocolate delicacy."
You'll forgive us if we include one of our own won't you? Off The Ball producer and Newstalk's roving GAA reporter Ciaran Murphy turned up at our door with a tear-stained face and a suitcase held tightly to his chest. I could tell he had packed quickly because the clothes were sticking out the side of the bag like in the movies. We took him in and gave him his own Monday morning column.
5. "Alex Ferguson was left in no doubt. 'In my time as a manager I would say yes, this is the best team I’ve faced.' But then, on Saturday night at Wembley, the Manchester United manager wasn’t exactly analysing the issue with the most detached viewpoint. His team had just been utterly dismantled by Barcelona. And as he gets closer to the end of his football career, it was a performance that will probably leave as deep an imprint on his memory as that of Real Madrid at Hampden Park near the start of it."
Miguel Delaney - of the late, lamented Sunday Tribune - this week launched his new website the Football Pantheon. It's worth a visit.
6. "Kearney has had plenty of time to think over the last six months, ever since injuring his left knee playing against New Zealand back in November. It took a while to fully diagnose the problem, but cartilage and ligament damage (“not the cruciate, but as serious, if not more serious, than the cruciate”) forced him to watch the entire Six Nations from the stands, and more recently Leinster’s sensational Heineken Cup triumph.
So when Concern offered him the chance to visit Ethiopia in March, to see for himself the various aid programmes they run out there, the 25-year-old jumped at it – realising the timing in every sense was ideal."
Rob Kearney tells the Irish Times' Ian O'Riordan about his eye-opening trip to Ethiopia
7. "The specific loss of a generation of expertise, and the general notion that Cork hurling has fallen rapidly from a standard-setting peak of five or six years ago, are some of the pressing matters which will land in the new county secretary’s in-tray. There is no shortage of speculation on potential replacements for current secretary Frank Murphy when he steps down, ranging from county board figures such as Mark Sheehan of Coiste na nÓg to GAA President Christy Cooney. Sheehan is regarded as able but inexperienced, while Cooney, on the surface a strong candidate, has significant weaknesses."
The Irish Examiner's Michael Moynihan picks through the debris after Cork's defeat to Tipp in Thurles on Sunday.
8. "There are tears in McGuigan's eyes and his face crumples. For a few moments he cannot speak for crying. I have met many fighters and, like McGuigan, I've fallen for the risible and the ruined. But I have not often been lost for words when sitting so close to a boxer whose enduring success and happiness is etched with tragedy. 'It's impossible not to feel guilty,' McGuigan eventually says."
Donald McRae interviews Barry McGuigan who recalls the death of Young Ali.
