Tokyo 2020 digest: Meadow and Maguire still in the hunt for medals

The Morning Sports Briefing: Keep ahead of the game with ‘The Irish Times’ sports team

Ireland's hopes for a medal or two in the women's individual strokeplay golf are still alive after Stephanie Meadow's third round 68 left her in a tie for 10th. She's two shots ahead of Leona Maguire - the Cavan native's one under par third round leaves her in 18th - and eight shots off leader Nelly Korda of Team USA. Brendan Boyce finished in 10th position in the last ever edition of the Olympic 50km walk in the early morning heat in Sapporo. Alex Wright finished 29th, picking up six places in the final 5km. For your day 14 guide of the Irish in action and the best of the rest click here. Don't forget, you can keep up to date with all of the action from Tokyo on our dedicated website.

The success of Kellie Harrington and the Irish boxing team in these Olympics has shown that Irish boxing has fully recovered from the nightmare of Rio: "this week Harrington and Walsh not only boxed superbly, but spoke beautifully too. The team building and preparation and the coaching of John Conlan and Zaur Antia, overseen by Dunne, has remapped boxing with medals." Johnny Watterson explains why there's more to the Olympic medal table than usually meets the eye. The ROC's healthy position on the table is a sad reminder of the IOC's rank hypocrisy: "Over the past two weeks Russian athletes have regularly featured on podiums as medal winners, although the team's name is announced as the "Russian Olympic Committee" or "ROC". The technical hitch here is that Russia may not be able to claim the medals although the Russian government has already warmly welcomed the athletes' victories."

Meanwhile, Shamrock Rovers were 1-0 winners over KF Teuta Durrës of Albania in last night's Europa Conference League qualifier thanks to 17 year-old Aidomo Emakhu's injury-time rocket. Dundalk were denied a famous Dutch win at the death by Vitesse. Patrick McEleney scored an outstanding double to threaten a major upset but Loïs Openda equalised a minute from the end before being sent off for kicking out at Sam Stanton. Barcelona have announced that Lionel Messi is leaving the club after "financial and structural obstacles" made it impossible to renew his contract. Manchester City have confirmed the £100 million (€116m) British record signing of Jack Grealish from Aston Villa.

In his column this morning (Subscriber Only), Jackie Tyrrell explains why Cork's intelligent use of pace will worry Kilkenny: "This Cork team are dangerous. Even when they weren't up to much, Cork always had this beautiful belief that's laced with arrogance. They believe they are better. They don't need a trip or two to Croke Park to sustain that belief. There's no such thing as you have to lose one to win one. "We are Cork boi, why wouldn't we win?"