Good morning,
There won’t be much need for lengthy warm-ups at the weekend when the football championship resumes. As Darragh Ó Sé tells us, a big part of the manager’s role in this type of weather is monitoring the limbering-up and saying “right, they’re well cooked now - let’s go out and serve up the dinner”.
Darragh, though, doesn’t expect any of the top teams to make a meal of it as they attempt to book direct flights to the quarter-finals, and given the current temperatures, he says, one less game will be highly appealing.
The Limerick hurlers are unlikely to spend the next four weeks sun-bathing, they have plenty of fine-tuning to do before they resume their four-in-a-row-seeking efforts. Seán Moran reflects on the Munster championship they won last Sunday, one that featured record attendances and an average point and a half winning margin in matches between the chief contenders.
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Clare, of course, felt hard done by in their one point defeat by Limerick, when they were denied two frees in the dying moments, but Adam Hogan tells Gordon Manning that there are no hard feelings towards the referee.
Nor is Galway’s Pádraic Mannion dwelling on that moment last Sunday when he kicked the sliotar into Cillian Buckley’s grasp, the resulting goal giving Kilkenny another Leinster title. “All the small things,” he tells Gordon Manning, “sure you could drive yourself mad thinking about them”.
Meanwhile, Gavin Cummiskey is over in Turkey monitoring the Republic of Ireland’s preparations for Friday’s European Championship qualifier against Greece in Athens. He hears from Callum O’Dowda and Troy Parrott ahead of the game, Parrott having fallen behind Evan Ferguson in the striker pecking order.
“We have not had a centre forward with his ability since Robbie Keane,” said Denis Irwin of Ferguson when he was in Dublin on Tuesday, Fiachra Gallagher hearing from the Cork man who is still recovering from Manchester City emulating his 1999 treble-winning achievement with United.
In golf, in the build-up to this week’s US Open, Philip Reid heard Jon Rahm talking about how tempted he has been to hide his phone in a drawer, so many requests was he receiving asking for his take on the LIV Golf business. Brooks Koepka is loving the “chaos” though, “the more chaotic things get the easier it gets for me” he said.
And in basketball, Aaron Timms looks back at Denver Nuggets winning their first championship in their 47-year history, their star man Nikola Jokić now in “the conversation for consideration as one of the sport’s all-time greats”. Even though he moves “with the grace of a cement mixer”.
Telly watch: If you’re a cycling fan, your luck is in - Eurosport has the opening stages of the Tour of Slovenia (12.30-3.0) and the Tour of Belgium (3.0-4.15). And this evening Virgin Media Two and Premier Sports 1 have live coverage of the Nations League semi-final between the Netherlands and Croatia (kick-off 7.45).
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