It was a year like no other for this Republic of Ireland team and they completed it in style at Windsor Park on Tuesday night with a thumping 6-1 win over Northern Ireland. The crowd was treated to another Katie McCabe “masterclass”, writes Gavin Cummiskey, the skipper unveiling her entire skill set: “killing balls with a subtle touch, whipping crosses on to Kyra Carusa’s grateful head and scoring a rare, right-footed gem.” As Gavin put it, “different gravy from the Arsenal star.”
With promotion secured to the top flight of the Nations League, next year will bring a whole new set of challenges, the opposition several notches above what Ireland faced in this campaign. But after the game, Gavin heard McCabe express her confidence in this team’s future, not least because of the flood of youthful talent coming through. “Whatever comes next,” he writes, “this year goes down as a special time in Irish women’s football, with McCabe at the vanguard.”
Leinster, meanwhile, are hoping for some special times themselves with the assistance of Jacques Nienaber, having endured back-to-back trophyless seasons. Gerry Thornley heard the South African talk about what he hopes to bring to the province now that he has joined the coaching team.
And ahead of Sunday’s Champions Cup game away to La Rochelle, Gordon D’Arcy reckons they have some work to do after a “fitful” display against Munster and an “erratic” one against Connacht. “Leinster have perhaps become a little too predictable,” he writes, “the onus is on a few people to break those shackles this weekend.”
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Munster open their Champions Cup campaign on home turf against Bayonne on Saturday, but the game comes too soon for Peter O’Mahony who is recovering from a shoulder injury. He hopes, though, to be back for their trip to Exeter on Sunday week.
In Gaelic games, Seán Moran writes about “the much reviled streaming service” that is GAAGO, dismissing the argument that the association should be making all of its matches available for free as “commercial nonsense”. “Media income is by a distance the biggest chunk of the GAA’s commercial earnings ... for every reduction in that revenue stream, you can knock off some of that developmental investment.”
And Paul Keane was in Croke Park for the launch of the Movember Ahead of the Game campaign, a youth mental health programme, and heard Antrim hurler Domhnall Nugent speak “with searing honesty” about his struggles down the years having suffered abuse as a child and addiction issues.
In athletics, Ian O’Riordan talks to Cormac Dalton ahead of his participation in Sunday’s European cross-country championships, the 25-year-old from Mullingar reflecting on his time at the University of Tulsa and discussing the pros and cons of going down the US scholarship route.
TV Watch: West Indies and England meet in the second of their three-match ODI series in Antigua today (TNT Sports 1 from 5.0), the hosts having won the opener on Sunday. And later, there are two televised Premier League games, Sheffield Utd v Liverpool (Premier Sports 2, kick-off 7.30) and Manchester United v Chelsea (Premier Sports 1, 8.15).
