After watching the opening round of European games at the weekend, Owen Doyle had a simple question: “Are people really happy to fork out their well-earned dosh to watch this carry-on?” Safe to say, then, he wasn’t hugely entertained, the scrum in particular continuing to be a source of “heartfelt frustration and annoyance”. It “has to be fixed - it is ruining the game”, he says, reckoning the lineout isn’t in great nick either. “It is not far from becoming an unstructured shambles.”
Gerry Thornley, in his review of the weekend, wasn’t overly enamoured either by the quality of the fare. “It’s as if Rassie Erasmus and Steve Borthwick devised this latest version of the sport,” he says, and any law book devised by the pair “simply cannot be good for the sport in general”.
Owen believes Leinster will have to “improve greatly if they are going to make a realistic challenge for the trophy”, their next challenge a trip to take on Leicester on Friday. Johnny Watterson has the team news, James Lowe likely to be available again for selection, but there are doubts over RG Snyman and Garry Ringrose after they picked up injuries against Harlequins.
There are doubts too over whether Mo Salah will ever play for Liverpool again. Arne Slot has left him out of the squad for tonight’s Champions League meeting with Inter Milan following his “extraordinary post-match tirade” after the draw with Leeds at the weekend. “Nobody,” writes Jonathan Wilson, “comes out of this well”, not the player, the manager nor the club.
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In Gaelic games, Seán Moran looks at one of the concerns raised by the GAA’s demographics committee report that was issued last week, namely falling birth rates and the impact that is having on clubs around the country.
In golf, Philip Reid brings some unsurprising news - Rory McIlroy has won an unprecedented sixth AGW Golf Writers’ Trophy after a remarkable season that saw him join the six-man Grand Slam club, as well as playing a starring role for Europe in winning the Ryder Cup at Bethpage.
Horse Racing Ireland had a trickier time of it choosing their performer of the year, in the end deciding to split their award between Galopin Des Champs and the shock Breeders’ Cup winner Ethical Diamond. A “dead heat”, as Brian O’Connor puts it.
And Brian also looks ahead to a weekend when Joseph O’Brien’s appetite for winners “is set to be underlined across the globe and across the codes”. Among his contenders will be Kim Roque in the December Gold Cup at Cheltenham and Al Riffa and Galen in the International Carnival in Hong Kong.
TV Watch: You have a bunch more Champions League games to choose from today, starting with Bayern Munich v Sporting CP at 5.45pm (Virgin Media Two and TNT Sports 3). At 8pm you have your pick of Inter Milan v Liverpool (Premier Sports 1), Barcelona v Eintracht Frankfurt (TNT Sports 4), Tottenham v Slavia Prague (TNT Sports 1) and Atalanta v Chelsea (Virgin Media Two and TNT Sports 2).
