Chelsea continue to lead the race for the Premier League's top four after their 1-0 win over Norwich last night, an anxious slog against opponents already relegated. Olivier Giroud's goal was enough to keep them in third place, four points clear of Leicester and Manchester United after playing a game more than their closest rivals. Manchester City's two-year ban from European competition, imposed by Uefa after it found the club guilty of a serious breach of financial fair play rules, has been lifted by the court of arbitration for sport. The court said City had failed to cooperate with Uefa's investigations but found that "most of the alleged breaches were either not established or time-barred". José Mourinho and Jürgen Klopp have strongly criticised the ruling. Tonight there are four Premier League matches including Arsenal versus champions Liverpool at 8.15pm.
The GAA confirmed on Tuesday that most of its indoor facilities will remain closed until further notice on "a risk stratification basis", as now agreed by the Association's Covid Advisory Group. Therefore all dressing rooms, club and county gyms will remain closed even as club matches resume this weekend. This weekend will see the first of the live club broadcasts on TG4, which will continue over the coming months with one live game on the Friday night and one live on Sunday afternoon. Wexford and Dublin senior hurling championship are the pick of the first post-lockdown fixtures of 2020. In his column this morning, Sean Moran explains how the Jack Charlton era made the GAA sit up and realise its greatest strength: "The Charlton years paradoxically brought out the GAA's great strength – its games as modern sports competing with other games without losing their cultural distinctiveness and not some theme park, ring-fenced by anathema."
The Irish Times has learned that the offer from the private equity firm CVC capital partners for a 14.5 per cent shareholding in the Six Nations tournament has been reduced by half, to €165 million. The two parties are to meet again within the next two weeks as they seek to agree a revised valuation. Following the latest round of talks the World Rugby council is now not expected to vote on creating an adjusted autumn window until the end of this month. This would accommodate the four postponed Six Nations matches and a revised November schedule in the near certainty that the proposed tests involving the major southern hemisphere sides will not proceed.
Meanwhile, Johnny Watterson has two excellent long reads in this morning's pages. The first, about American climber Alex Honnold whose free solo ascent of El Captain is arguably the greatest athletic feat ever accomplished: "a southern Californian geek, an outlier, an emotionally listless, self-isolating climber, who does fingertip pull-ups on the door of his camper van for breakfast and without rope conquers the 3,000 foot granite slab of El Capitan (El Cap) in Yosemite, California for the first time, the only time." The second, an interview with Dublin teenager Justin Anene who has his sights set firmly on the top rung of the wrestling world.
