As Wednesdays go, Andy Farrell has surely had better ones. First there was news of Bundee Aki’s removal from his squad and his subsequent six-week suspension for his “interactions” with match officials after Connacht’s defeat to Leinster last Saturday. Then came word that Hugo Keenan had fractured his thumb. When it rains, it buckets down.
On the Aki turn of events, Gerry Thornley accepts that the IRFU has to defend its match officials, but he’s bemused by their “extraordinarily pre-emptive” statement which read “like a guilty verdict” even before Aki’s disciplinary hearing took place.
As for Keenan, who sustained his injury in training with the Irish squad in Portugal, John O’Sullivan tells us that the recovery prognosis is four to six weeks - “which suggests that he will struggle to take any part in the Six Nations Championship”.
Before these tales of woe broke, John sat down with Caelan Doris for a chat, discipline, ironically enough, a central theme of the conversation. Having conceded 18 penalties and picked up five cards in November’s defeat by South Africa, lessons, the Irish captain insisted, have to be learnt.
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If Irish rugby is having it rough at the moment, it’s in the ha’penny place next to the turmoil Irish rowing is enduring this weather. Among the revelations at Wednesday’s Oireachtas Committee meeting was that they had their funding withheld on the eve of the Paris Olympics after “failing to adequately address serious concerns around athlete safeguarding and welfare”. Michael Scully reports.
Ciarán Murphy looks back at the opening weekend of the National Leagues, the mood in Galway “unexpectedly buoyant” despite defeats for their hurlers and footballers. The GAA will be less buoyant, though, about the controversy over its link with sponsors Allianz rumbling on.
It’s unlikely there was much buoyancy at all in Waterford hurling after their “humbling double-digit defeat” to Cork last weekend, Gordon Manning talking to the county’s former manager Michael Ryan about the need to kickstart their campaign against Limerick on Sunday.
In golf, “the prodigal son is back on the PGA Tour”, Philip Reid reporting on Brooks Koepka’s appearance this week at the Farmers Insurance Open after his three-and-a half-year spell on the LIV circuit. And as if poor old LIV hasn’t suffered enough blows of late, Patrick Reed has announced that he is leaving them too.
In football, Stephen Bradley concedes that Shamrock Rovers’ gifted 17-year-old striker Michael Noonan is likely to leave the club soon enough, Hoffenheim edging closer to Rovers’ valuation of the player - around €2m - with their latest bid.
And in his America at Large column, Dave Hannigan has “a feelgood story at a time when the US desperately needs some”. Figure skater Maxim Naumov has qualified for next month’s Winter Olympics in Milan after finishing third in the US nationals, just a year after he lost both of his parents in a plane crash.
TV Watch: We’re at the semi-final stage of the Australia tennis Open, TNT Sports’ live coverage continuing until 1.0 this afternoon. At 5.0, Sky Sports Golf takes us to the Farmers Insurance Open in San Diego, Séamus Power the sole Irish player in the field. And at 8.0 this evening there are a bunch of Europa League games to choose from - including Celtic v Utrecht (Premier Sports and TNT Sports), Aston Villa v Salzburg (TNT Sports) and Nottingham Forest v Ferencváros (TNT Sports).
