Good morning,
With the provincial finals still to be played, Tuesday’s draw for the football championship didn’t exactly provide us with a clear roadmap for the summer ahead – eg Ulster winner v Munster runner-up, Munster winner v Leinster runner-up, etc – but Malachy Clerkin decided to go “against God and nature” with a spot of “fate-tempting” to give us an idea of what the menu might look like.
In a word: tasty. The opening weekend of the group phase of the championship could give us, for example, a meeting between Kerry and Mayo in Killarney and a tussle between Galway and Tyrone in Salthill. But only if Malachy’s crystal ball hasn’t malfunctioned.
Whatever the matchups prove to be, Darragh Ó Sé believes the championship is shaping up nicely, having been impressed by some of the football on show in the latest round of matches. He was particularly pleased to see Kildare put it up to the Dubs, but reckons Dessie Farrell’s men “have plenty more in the tank”.
John Kiely, meanwhile, is confident that his Limerick hurlers haven’t run out of juice either, telling Gordon Manning that there’s no panic in the All Ireland champions’ camp after that defeat by Clare.
There was, Seán Moran tells us, “uproar on social media” over that game not being televised, it being only available on GAAGO, the streaming service run by the GAA and RTÉ. The difficulty of course, with a streaming service is that you need decent broadband for it to run smoothly, and there are plenty of parts of the country where the broadband is far from decent – and in some parts, not available at all.
Tipperary are Limerick’s next opponents in the championship and it was to that county Kiely travelled, along with several other intercounty managers, for the launch of The Dillon Quirke Foundation fundraising drive, its aim to establish a system that ensures every GAA player over the age of 12 gets cardiac-screened. The foundation was set up in honour of Quirke who died at the age of just 24 from Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.
And in rugby, Gordon D’Arcy looks ahead to the Champions Cup final and the work Leinster must put in between now and May 20th if they are to avenge last year’s defeat by La Rochelle. The fact that they missed almost 20 per cent of their tackles against Toulouse has him fretting a bit, their defensive system in need of refinement, he says. But panic not – he’s confident that Leinster have the right template, they just need to perfect it.
Telly watch: There are slim enough pickings on the box tonight, but if you’d like to see Manchester City continue their procession towards the Premier League title (Arsenal fans: “Oi!”), they’re playing West Ham (Sky Sports, kick-off 8.0).
