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LOCKER ROOM: Eight sent off in the last 10 minutes. A return to traditional values. More of this sort of thing and the club will be right back at centre stage for the winter months

ONE OF the few things to enjoy about the penance which Irish weather imposes on us all is the sense of knowing what we all are. Put your hand up if you didn’t wake in the early hours of yesterday morning and on hearing the rain making its familiar din on your window think with deep regret, “Oh no the pitches will be off”. No? Have ye no lives? Of course, of course the year is crowding December at this stage and people are suffering the effects of biblical flooding on top of the misery the Government and the church have left behind, so anybody with a healthy sense of perspective should be fretting about The X Factor but, but, but.