Well that was a heartbreaker, wasn't it? After hitting the post and having a chance cleared off the line, Ireland's Euro 2020 hopes were ended in Bratislava last night when Matt Doherty's penalty came crashing back off the crossbar after a 0-0 draw with Slovakia. It was a cruel ending to what had been a positive night in just Stephen Kenny's third match in charge but, ultimately, it means Dublin won't be hosting any Ireland matches at next year's rescheduled European Championships. A strange night began with a Covid-19 fiasco which saw Aaron Connolly and Adam Idah ruled out of the match at the 11th hour because they had been deemed close contacts of an FAI backroom staff member who tested positive for the virus. It later emerged that the positive case was a member of the non-football staff which has Ken Early questioning this morning whether this could have been avoided. "How players of this importance could have been exposed to this sort of contact is a mistake that becomes more astonishing the more you think about it. Say what you like about the FAI, they keep finding ways to amaze you," he writes. Meanwhile, we also have Malachy Clerkin's player ratings while Mary Hannigan writes that, watching on RTÉ, we wouldn't have blinked if Michael Flatley suddenly tapped his way across the floor.
On to rugby and Gerry Thornley writes this morning that winds of change are in the air as Andy Farrell gathers his first Ireland squad. The Ireland head coach has picked six uncapped players in his squad with John Cooney one of the biggest surprises in the exclusions list. "Although that first game against Italy at the Aviva Stadium offers more scope for experimentation, the starting line-up especially and match-day 23 is liable to fall along familiar lines," he writes.
Moving on and the name of disgraced former swimming coach George Gibney has been in the public forum a lot lately since the release of the BBC Sounds and Second Captains podcast 'Where is George Gibney?' When Gibney's crimes against children he had coached were revealed in the 1990s, Johnny Watterson was a key player in the exposure of the Irish coach and this morning he writes that, even now 26 years on, the re-telling of the story should cause us all discomfort. "Everyone is responsible for a legal system that allowed Gibney walk away from 27 counts of indecency and carnal knowledge of children. A legal system that also changed in time to jail child abuser Derry O'Rourke, Gibney's appointed successor, who failed using the same defence," he writes.
In GAA, Seán Moran writes that Dungarvan's Covid-19 error will have longer term implications than Cork's after the Waterford club admitted to fielding a player who was waiting on a test result which then came back positive.
Finally to golf and Shane Lowry found form at Wentworth yesterday with a first round of 67 leaving him at five under par and one shot off the three-way tie for the lead held by Tyrrell Hatton, Adri Arnaus and Justin Harding. Lowry gets underway in the second round at 7.55am this morning.
