... compiled by Mary Hannigan

Redhead Maureen no red head

Maureen 'Quiet Man' O'Hara appeared on the Late Late Show on Friday night and proved herself to be something of a Shamrock Rovers diehard. "I loved Rovers," she said, "as a child I went to their games every Wednesday, every Saturday, every Sunday, whenever they were on."

"So you took no pleasure in Shelbourne doing well in Europe?" Pat Kenny asked her.

O'Hara grimaced. "Shelbourne? Who are they?" Maureen O'Hara, a Rovers Ultra - who'd have believed it? Presumably she'll be rooting for Lille this week.

Lights, camera ... Liverpool

Big thanks to the Liverpool fan who emailed us a list of possible movie remakes in light of "the talk of Hollywood money going into Liverpool". Ready? When Harry Met Xabi, Kewell Runnings, Scooby Diouf, Huckleberry Finnan, Darren Potter And The Chamber of Secrets, The Shawshankly Redemption, SeaBiscan, An-Field of Dreams, Benitez Hur and our favourite, Molby Dick.

Quotes of the week

"Scoring for Lazio this season has been like making love with the woman of my dreams, Demi Moore."

- The one and only Paolo Di Canio.

"I felt lost, to lose all those contacts, the network of people around you, the email system, telephone, fax, the staff . . ."

- Bobby Robson on the things he misses most since leaving Newcastle. Note he didn't list Kieron Dyer, Alan Shearer, etc, just office equipment.

"When you thump a fist on the desk you either break the desk or you break your hand, nothing else happens."

- Roberto Carlos pays tribute to the managerial style of Jose Antonio Camacho, who resigned as Real Madrid boss.

"The Galacticos aren't more than a band of stray dogs."

- And Diego Maradona pays tribute to Roberto Carlos and Co.

"Is it hard to take? Does it make you sick to your stomach? Of course."

- Crystal Palace manager Iain Dowie enjoying life in the Premiership.

Great footballing miss-matches

We don't mean to tar them all with the same brush but we're sensing that modern footballers just aren't getting the hang of this romance lark. While no one will ever quite match Nicolas Anelka (especially the time he took his agent with him on a date with his new girlfriend) Jermain Defoe is catching up. He'd promised to take his girlfriend for a romantic dinner last month but having scored against Birmingham that day decided instead to rush home to see Match of the Day. Dinner cancelled.

"Seeing my goals on Match of the Day is one of the best things about scoring," he said, "so in the end I just bought her a bag of chips and we went home."

Then there's Lee Hendrie. His private life has been splashed all over the tabloids recently after Becky's "June marriage to the Aston Villa love cheat crumbled in hours". Hours? "It even got to the stage where a friend of my mum's was having her nails done and heard the beautician saying her pal was knocking off Lee," revealed Becky, who also discovered that Lee had celebrated his marriage by having flings with "two friends of mine who are sisters, and a neighbour of his mum".

Becky is flummoxed about it all - "I'm not saying I'm special but a lot of the girls he's had are fat and ugly - I'm told Emma is a bit of a chipmunk."

Shay, also known as Shary

The current Irish goalkeeper, according to www.fifa4fans.com (which provides pictures of players for FIFA computer games), is a chap by the name of Shary Given who looks like a cross between Wayne Rooney and Benny from Crossroads.

More quotes of the week

"When I cut the grass the cows all come over to the fence and I feed them and it's blinding."

- David 'Del Boy' Bentley, on loan at Norwich from Arsenal, enjoying the rural life.

"We shouldn't wait for flowers to come from people. Maybe we will get some at the end of the season but right now it's very difficult."

- Jose Mourinho, feeling a little unloved these days.

"It's very painful . . . the coach just thinks that Le Saux is better than me. There is nothing else to do but to show I am better than him. That must be it as Le Saux can't do anything else as a defender."

- Jelle Van Damme, miserable at Southampton.

"I am very happy at Southampton. I have no problem with the manager, Graeme Le Saux or any of the players."

- Jelle Van Damme, ecstatic at Southampton.

"Doncaster is a hard-working town and there was a challenge but we were chocolate warriors."

- Joe Royle explains why his Ipswich side were knocked out of the League Cup. A bunch of Curly Wurlys.

Talking through his Winterbottom

In his column on the BBC website Sheffield United manager Neil Warnock paid tribute to Brian Clough last week. "The big disappointment for me was that he was never England manager," he said. "He thought he'd had a great interview when he went to Lancaster Gate and he was absolutely distraught when Walter Winterbottom got the job."

As Football 365 politely pointed out: "Considering that Clough was a full 12 years old when Winterbottom was appointed England manager in 1946, surely that was a tad over-ambitious even for the great man himself".

Song of the week

"Heinze, wherever you may be, you are the king of variety." Manchester United fans' ode to Gabriel Heinze (means beans), to the tune of Lord of the Dance.

Game over for gals on the game

There were ructions at a women's football tournament in Guatemala when the organisers decided to expel one of the teams, Stars of the Line, after their first game. Their captain, Valeria, was none too pleased and suspected she knew the real reason for their ejection: "When they found out we were prostitutes they tossed us out like cockroaches - it is really discrimination."

Officials, though, insisted that Stars of the Line (who take their name from Guatemala City's red-light district, situated beside the railway tracks) weren't thrown out because of their occupation, rather because of the chanting of their supporters at the game - which loosely translated as: "One, two, three, whore."