The IRFU is set to confirm 40-plus professional contracts for members of the Ireland women’s 15s and Sevens national squads. Only Sevens players have been previously contracted. It represents the first time that the Union will offer professional contracts to some of the Ireland women’s 15s squad. In remuneration terms there are likely to be several bands, with a figure of €30,000 at the upper end of the payment scale. The terms and conditions of contracts will have to be flexible to facilitate the diverse nature in terms of squad composition. Ireland are the last of the Women’s Six Nations countries to offer professional contracts. Ireland’s rugby captain Nichola Fryday’s quality as a person and a player marks her as a key figure in the regeneration of Irish women’s rugby in the new professional era. Winning an Ireland cap before she had played provincial rugby, Fryday hasn’t taken a backward step in her career.
Ciarán Murphy tries to imagine last Sunday’s All-Ireland football final through the eyes of the four marquee forwards on display in today’s subscriber only piece — David Clifford and Seán O’Shea for Kerry and Damien Comer and Shane Walsh for Galway. “Comer hit 2-2 in Galway’s semi-final win over Derry. He was a force of nature, irrepressible. O’Shea started their semi-final win over Dublin in a whirlwind and hit ‘the kick from the end of the earth’ as Michael Foley called it on the Sunday Game that night. Both of them had zero shots on goal from play in the All-Ireland final.” But for Clifford and Walsh, “for better or worse, All-Ireland final day heroics end the discussion.”
In the build-up to the women’s Mary Geaney believes it is Kerry’s time to end All Ireland famine when they play Meath. Geaney broke many barriers as she was a ladies’ football All-Ireland winning captain with Kerry, All-Ireland winning captain with Cork camogie, national and provincial success in badminton, 61 international caps with the Irish hockey team and managing a young Killarney team to the Irish Senior Cup with a 4-1 win over Royal Portrush in 2017, their first title. Meath’s all-action style has proved a hard conundrum to crack for opponents and Niamh O’Sullivan talks about how the defending All-Ireland champions’ game plan continues to succeed. “A lot comes down to the management team and the effort they put in behind the scenes. I haven’t experienced a management team like them, they’re fantastic.”
In this week’s America at Large column, Donald Trump stays true to form by putting Saudi Arabia’s LIV Golf money ahead of 9/11 Justice. “He has a long and tawdry history of disgracing himself when it comes to exploiting the events of September 11th, 2001,” writes David Hannigan. “Mere hours after the towers fell, he did a phone interview with a New York television station in which he took time to boast that, since the World Trade Center had just fallen, 40 Wall Street, a property he happened to own, was now the tallest building in lower Manhattan”. For Trump, the Liv Golf represents a chance of revenge after the PGA took a major from his Bedminster club. It comes as LIV Golf reveals 14-event plan with over $400m in prize money for 2023. No dates and locations have been announced but plan is to “expand LIV Golf’s global footprint”.
It is 28 years since Jessica Harrington landed the first major pot of her stellar career in the Guinness Galway Hurdle and Autumn Evening could mark that anniversary in style on Thursday. In 1994 Oh So Grumpy justified a major gamble in the summer’s biggest hurdle prize to announce his trainer on the big stage. Now she sends out Autumn Evening in pursuit of second success at Galway races feature. It is all quiet in Galway’s pubs and restaurants as races return after two years. “People can go on a foreign holiday for the price that they might pay for a couple of days away in Galway,” Vinny McBrian, supervisor at Seven Bridgestreet in the city, said. Meanwhile, Jordan Gainford steered Hewick to Galway Plate success despite wayward loose horse, as Spanish international soccer star Álvaro Odriozola won at the festival with Sir Antonio.
