It would be true to say that Dublin football manager Ger Brennan hasn’t quite let go of his anger over the 12-week suspension he received for a clash with Galway’s strength and conditioning coach back in March. “A lot of political dark arts went on behind the scenes,” he tells Gordon Manning, Brennan suggesting that he was “collateral damage” in it all. If Martians paid us earthlings a visit, he says, they’d struggle to make sense of it all.
In rugby, Hugo Keenan produced an otherworldly display on the scoring front with that hat-trick against Argentina, Gordon D’Arcy hailing him in his column today as someone who “represents everything that is right about this Irish team”. Gordon gives his view on Ireland’s all-round performance last Friday and looks ahead to Saturday’s meeting with Fiji.
One concern, of course about this Irish team is the age profile of its centres. Stuart McCloskey, for example, will turn 35 less than two months before next year’s World Cup. Is he bothered? Not a bit. “It feels like a problem for future Ireland, not for me,” he tells Michael Scully. “I just want to play as much as I can. Honestly, I couldn’t care less about the succession of what’s going on after me.”
In golf, David Gorman takes us through the history of Saudi Arabia’s sportswashing project, LIV Golf. It promised to revolutionise the sport, but ultimately achieved little other than making some rich golfers richer. “Golf, but louder” was LIV’s slogan,” David writes. “But after its demise many in golf will be glad for some peace and quiet.”
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To put it mildly, Rory McIlroy was never LIV’s biggest fan, and as he limbers up for the final tournament of the year on the DP World Tour, he found time to comment on Bryson DeChambeau’s predicament as he searches for a new golfing home now that LIV is no more. “It doesn’t seem like he’s got many options,” McIlroy wept (kidding), Philip Reid reporting.
In football, Troy Parrott and Katie McCabe are among the nominees for the FAI’s player of the year award, Muireann Duffy bringing you the full list of contenders.
Ciarán Kirk has good news from the Youth Olympics in Senegal where Dublin boxer Kristain Jubani has guaranteed himself at least a bronze medal, and back home there’s some positive news on the facilities front with the new National Velodrome and Badminton Centre in Abbotstown supposedly on track to be completed by the spring of 2028. We can but hope it’s not another children’s hospital.
TV Watch: A quiet-ish day again on the box, but Disney Plus subscribers can see more from the Women’s Champions League, including our own Kyra Carusa’s HB Køge away to OH Leuven (5.45pm) and Juventus hosting OL Lyonnes (8pm).
