There was no end of “hugging, kissing, yupping and hollering” at Marco Simone Golf Club on Sunday afternoon when Tommy Fleetwood sealed the point that won Europe the Ryder Cup, Philip Reid, possibly sodden from all the champagne flying through the air, on hand to witness the celebrations.
“It was,” Denis Walsh concludes, “a crazy weekend”, one that included that Saturday night car park incident involving Rory McIlroy and Jim “Bones” Mackay which was “like something you’d see outside a chipper after the pubs close”.
Zombie even got a few airings at the course, although it seems to be just about the only tune that didn’t feature in the singsong that took place on John O’Sullivan’s tram after the Uruguay v Namibia game in Lyon, the rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody one that will, we suspect, live long in his memory.
The Irish supporters will, we’ll hope, be in fine voice too after next Saturday’s game against Scotland, Gerry Thornley bringing you all the permutations ahead of the pool finale. “As expected,” he writes, “the pool of sharks will go down to the wire,” with Ireland, South Africa and Scotland all still in contention for a place in the knock-out stages.
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One thing we can be assured of is that Ireland will be well fed going in to the encounter, Gerry hearing from Irish rugby’s head of nutrition Emma Gardner. “They just like food – and lots of it,” she says of a squad as hungry for their grub as they are for World Cup success.
Ken Early, meanwhile, is fed up. Writing about VAR, that is. And after the controversy surrounding Liverpool’s disallowed goal on Saturday, he’s had to address the issue yet again. His solution? “We don’t actually have to persist with this nonsense. We can just get rid of it, the way the Americans repealed Prohibition. The VAR future is not inevitable. It can go down as a misguided interlude.”
A more glorious interlude in the history of Cork GAA came in the form of Jimmy Barry-Murphy’s hurling and football career, Denis in attendance at the city’s Opera House to hear the maestro reflect on achievements that included football and hurling All-Irelands at minor, U21 and senior level.
And in part eight of his ‘Lessons in marathon running’ series, Ian O’Riordan offers advice to those fine-tuning their preparations for the Dublin Marathon at the end of the month. “It’s not entirely unknown for some runners to sleep it out on race day,” he tells us. No flies on them.
TV Watch: Having spent over €1 billion in the last three transfer windows, Chelsea would have expected to be slightly higher than 15th in the Premier League table going in to October. They could, then, do with a win when they visit Fulham tonight (Sky Sports Premier League, 8.0). And RTÉ 2′s Against the Head has all the latest from the Rugby World Cup (8.0).
