Contenders await their fate in new-look football championship format

Good morning,

“From being out and about,” Feargal McGill, the GAA director of games administration, tells Seán Moran, “I don’t think the GAA public fully grasps what lies ahead.”

You’d guess he’s entirely right, the likelihood being that this lunchtime’s draw for the group stages of the football championship and Tailteann Cup, which introduces a new format to both competitions, will leave more than a few befuddled.

“The Sam Maguire draw,” writes Jim McGuinness, “signifies the start line for the 16 teams who will chase down the game’s biggest prize.” And of those 16, he believes there are seven genuine contenders for “one of the most open championships in recent memory”. And no one impressed him more last weekend than Derry.

The Limerick hurlers, though, have had a faltering start to their campaign, narrowly beating Waterford before losing to Clare by a point last Saturday, a result that saw their 17-match unbeaten run in the championship come to an end. Few saw that coming after they won the league so emphatically, leaving Seán wondering if “the expenditure of impressive displays puts league winners into some sort of performance debt”.

There was no performance debt from either Leinster or La Rochelle last weekend as they both cruised in to the Champions Cup final, Ronan O’Gara dismissing any notion that Leinster have a tougher build-up to the game with a URC quarter-final and possible semi-final in their schedule. “The month Leinster have this month, we have it every month,” he said.

Owen Doyle, meanwhile, reflects on the quality of the refereeing in the semi-finals and wonders who might be appointed for what he believes will be “a final of epic proportions”. La Rochelle, he assumes, like all French teams, will have “had enough of what they term ‘arbitres britanniques’”.

And also in rugby, Gerry Thornley looks back at what was a demoralising Six Nations campaign for the women’s team. “Only time will tell if this is as bad as it gets,” he writes, but he points to some “green shoots of optimism”, notably in the performances of the under-18 team. “Maybe from this point, finally if gradually, the only way is up?”

In soccer, Nathan Johns was in London to see Katie McCabe’s Arsenal suffer extra-time heartbreak in their Champions League semi-final against Wolfsburg, in front of a crowd of 60,063 at the Emirates.

If they’re feeling low, spare a thought for golfer Greg Chalmers who pops up in Philip Reid’s Different Strokes column. “Just missed my 211th cut. Two takeaways: 1 – I might want to hit the ball better than this. 2 – I’m getting really good at dealing with disappointment.”

Telly watch: If Arsenal fans can bear to watch, they’re back in Premier League action tonight. All we can do to soothe their nerves is to remind them that their visitors are Chelsea (Sky Sports, kick-off 8.0). There’s always someone worse off.