Liverpool held in Merseyside derby; Double bronze for Ireland in Glasgow

After the weekend's Premier League results, Manchester City are now outright leaders by a point. Liverpool's 0-0 draw with Everton in yesterday's Merseyside derby at Goodison Park means they are now in second place with nine matches remaining for each side. In his column this morning, Ken Early explains why VAR could further undermine soccer's integrity (Subscriber Only): "Incompetence was always the great alibi of referees and one unintended consequence of VAR is to take that away. Bad calls that used to be explained as mistakes will now be interpreted as corruption, and football's integrity, already a joke to many, will become harder to believe in than ever."

Ciara Mageean and Mark English made it a double bronze for Ireland at the European Indoor Championships at Glasgow. Mageean won bronze over 1,500 metres after a properly frantic finish, only passed for silver in the closing strides when the super-fast finishing Sofia Ennaoui from Poland came back her to snatch second. While English found himself swimming in a sea of lactic, holding on, hanging in, digging deep, to win bronze over 800m. He's now won a medal in every championship final he's run.

The CCCC will meet this afternoon to refix the Division One league hurling matches that fell victim to the torrential rain that swept across the south and east of the country on Sunday. While three of the four quarter-finals will likely be pushed back a week. In Division One of the football league, Kerry scored seven of the last eight points in Killarney to beat Monaghan and make it five league wins from five. While Dublin were five point winners over a battling Roscommon team, despite trailing early in the second half at Dr Hyde Park.

Meanwhile a refreshed James Ryan is rested and ready for Ireland's penultimate Six Nations match with France this weekend. Last Sunday's win in Rome was only the fourth of Ireland's last 16 games which the 22-year-old lock has missed - "I'm probably a bad watcher. It's not easy, you kind of hate being on the sideline watching. You feel kind of helpless."