Saturday's Munster football final is to be a non-event according to Darragh Ó Sé. In his column this morning the former Kerry midfielder writes off Cork's chances against his own county: "Add it all up and you have a Cork football team that has been ground down by years of failure. The Munster final is a non-event now. Nobody is going to Cork on Saturday night under any illusions. Kerry weren't hectic against Clare but it would still be a big surprise if Cork managed to pull out any sort of result against them." While Seán Moran has three topical questions to preoccupy the GAA - addressing population shift, the eternal fixtures issue, and making the best of the hurling championship. Read his column here.
Ireland's champion trainer Aidan O'Brien took an immediate grip on the best week's racing of the year at Ascot on Tuesday. Circus Maximus won the one mile St James's Palace Stakes in a thrilling finish, for an eighth win in the Day One feature for O'Brien who'd earlier landed a ninth Coventry Stakes with the 15-8 favourite Arizona proving half a length too good. Brian O'Connor believes O'Brien's Magical can win today's Prince Of Wales's Stakes. The Group One-winning Japanese mare, with an Irish name, Deirdre, also lines up and Ascot's authorities have moved the day two feature from its traditional fourth race slot in order to facilitate Japanese racing fans' renowned appetite for watching their stars on the international stage.
Dundalk were yesterday drawn to play FC Riga in the first round of the Champions League qualifiers in a couple of weeks, when progressing just one round will be worth €400,000 to the club. Shamrock Rovers look to have the toughest of the assignments for the three Irish clubs in the Europa League with the Dubliners having been drawn against Brann Bergen, a Norwegian club with a decent pedigree in the competition. St Patrick's Athletic's will take on Swedish side Norkopping, while Cork City, the only one of the three League of Ireland clubs to be seeded in the draw, will have to wait until the competition's preliminary round is complete to discover whether they will face Progres Niederkorn or Cardiff Metropolitan University. Marta's second-half penalty sent Brazil into the last 16 of the women's World Cup with a 1-0 win against Italy on Tuesday that ensured they finished as one of the best third-placed sides.
Meanwhile, Ronan O'Gara's first big test as new head coach with French club La Rochelle might be to take his team to Thomond Park to face Munster in the pool phase of the European Champions Cup - the draw for next season's European competition takes place today in the Centre de Congrès Beaulieu in Lausanne, Switzerland. Teams will be grouped into four tiers of five. This method could allow La Rochelle to be drawn in the same pool as Munster. Johnny Watterson explains the draw in full here.
