GAA: The saga of the venues for the GAA's All-Ireland football quarter-final replays goes on. Whereas it has been announced Sligo and Armagh will replay in Navan on Sunday, 18th August, there are still no arrangements for the Dublin-Donegal match.
There was no explanation from Croke Park last night concerning this delay but GAA officials had been meeting with local residents to discuss the staging of Dublin-Donegal on Saturday, 17th. It can be surmised from the deferred announcement that the residents aren't happy with the prospect of even the Dublin replay on its own being staged at headquarters.
Some decision will have to be made soon, probably today, but the impasse is straining relations between the GAA and the residents.
There had already been great agonising over the venue for Sligo-Armagh and Navan with a capacity of less than 30,000, most of which is terraced, is not the ideal solution. But it was just about the only practical solution, given that Sligo understandably didn't want to travel to Clones and Armagh didn't want to go to Castlebar - the only grounds in the northern half of the country with capacities significantly over 30,000.
This match has been moved to Sunday because of the traffic implications for Navan on a Saturday. The throw-in time will not become clear until RTÉ decides if they want to televise it after the Tipperary-Kilkenny hurling semi-final.
None of this would have arisen had Central Council not reversed a Games Administration Committee recommendation that extra time be played in All-Ireland quarter-finals. The original recommendation arose from last year's experience when two football quarter-finals also ended in draws.
Suggestions that Dublin-Donegal be played on Sunday 25th with the Cork-Kerry All-Ireland semi-final moved from Croke Park to somewhere that it might have a chance of drawing a crowd have not attracted much enthusiasm as the winners of Dublin-Donegal have their own semi-final just a week later.
Meanwhile a big crowd is expected for this evening's Munster under-21 hurling final between Tipperary and defending All-Ireland champions Limerick in Thurles. Limerick are pursuing a third successive All-Ireland success, an achievement not completed for 21 years when Tipperary recorded it. Cork achieved a four-in-a-row in the 1960s.
Limerick are hot favourites to emulate the three-in-a-row given that their team features no fewer than 11 players who hurled in last year's All-Ireland final defeat of Wexford - 12 if Andrew O'Shaughnessy, who came on as a replacement, is included.
Their narrow win over a highly rated Cork in this year's Munster championship was impressive and puts them in pole position against a Tipperary side that was lack-lustre in its dispatch of Waterford in the semi-final.
They can boast two of the county's senior All-Ireland medallists from last year, Lar Corbett and All Star Eoin Kelly who had a frustrating semi-final and whose form has been a little subdued since the county's big setback in the senior provincial final.
Limerick yesterday named an unchanged team from the match against Cork.
LIMERICK: T Houlihan; D Reale, B Carroll, E Mulcahy; E Foley, P O'Dwyer, M O'Brien; M O'Donnell, P Lawlor; C Fitzgerald, J O'Brien, K Tobin; A O'Shaughnessy, N Moran, M Keane.
