We’ll get the bad news out of the way first. If you want to spend a day at next year’s Ryder Cup at Adare Manor, a ticket will cost you €499. (That’s not a typo). The good news? Golf fans on the island of Ireland, as Denis Walsh tells us, are being given “an exclusive priority window to be scalped before everybody else”. Are there people daft enough to pay these prices? Of course. “The Ryder Cup will be a sell-out” because, when it comes to sport’s “bucket-list” events, “people lose their senses and the house always wins”.
If you’ve lost your senses and would like to register for that priority window, Philip Reid guides you through the process, the portal opening at 11am tomorrow. Mercifully, there’ll be no dynamic pricing, but will the touts have a field day? Guess.
American sports fans are long used to being scalped, and Dave Hannigan brings us the latest example of franchises finding new ways to wring even more money out of them. With the ever increasing push towards going digital, paper tickets are becoming a thing of the past, and organisers are now offering limited-edition printed tickets in an effort to cash in on the lucrative memorabilia industry. At a price, of course.
In Gaelic games, our Gordon Manning has been hanging out with celebs. Well, one any way, in the shape of actor Chris O’Dowd. And based on his chat with Gordon, you’d have a notion that if he could turn back the clock and change the result of the 1997 Connacht minor final, when he was the Roscommon goalkeeper, he’d take that ahead of an Oscar.
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Ciarán Murphy, meanwhile, looks at the changing face of the Leinster football and hurling championships. “For this entire century,” he writes, Dublin and Kilkenny “have been hoovering up provincial championships with contemptuous ease”. Now? They’re not quite the force they once were.
In rugby, Ireland head to Clermont on Saturday to take on France in the Six Nations, and fullback Stacey Flood was sounding decidedly confident when she spoke to Michael Scully about the challenge. “I’d be worried if I was them,” she said.
And ahead of Sunday’s AIL final at the Aviva Stadium, Gerry Thornley hears from St Mary’s Greg Jones, who spent seven years with Ulster, about taking on reigning champions Clontarf.
And in the Joining The Team series, Muireann Duffy talks to Hiko Tonosa about his remarkable story, the marathon runner believing his move to Ireland saved his life after spending time in prison in his native Ethiopia for protesting against the oppression of the Oromo people. Having become an Irish citizen in 2020, he’s dreaming of representing his adopted country at the LA Olympics.
TV Watch: Shane Lowry pairs up with Brooks Koepka at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, which gets under way today (Sky Sports Golf, 1pm and 8pm), and the same channel will have coverage of round one of the Chevron Championship, the first major of the women’s season, where Leona Maguire is the sole Irish player in the field (4pm and 11pm).
