A sobering Saturday and a sublime Sunday. It was a case of agony to ecstasy for Irish sports fans over the weekend, from France giving us a severe dose of les bleus to Sarah Healy, Mark English and Kate O’Connor giving us three shiny medals at the European Indoor Championships.
“Never in the long history of Irish athletics have three major medals been won in such magnificently swift succession, all three historic in their own right too,” writes Ian O’Riordan in his summing up of a quite glorious evening in Apeldoorn where Healy struck gold in the 3,000m, and English and O’Connor took bronze in the 800m and pentathlon, respectively.
Alas, our rugby lads finished second on Saturday, and didn’t even get a silver for their troubles. We have no end of reading on the game - there’s Gerry Thornley’s match report and his piece on Simon Easterby’s reaction to the defeat. There’s Malachy Clerkin on the response from the French camp to their triumph and his take on the sorcery of Louis Bielle-Biarrey.
There’s Johnny Watterson’s player ratings, his view on the impact of the loss of James Lowe, after a back spasm ruled him out of the contest, five things we learnt from the game and he hears from Cian Healy after his last international on home soil. And John O’Sullivan has the reaction from the French media and an analysis of how France’s ruthlessness won out on the day.
José Mourinho makes Tottenham waste time, and James McClean has a revolting rhyme
Amy Broadhurst: ‘I was on the Irish team, then on the British team, now I’m on no team'
Tap And Go competition winner: Easterby bemoans Ireland’s failure to take their opportunities
JP McManus: From fearless young punter to Cheltenham’s most successful racehorse owner
In Gaelic games, the red mist descended on two of hurling’s Division 1A games, with seven - seven! - players sent off. Four of them were dismissed, in less than 10 minutes, in Tipperary’s win over Kilkenny, Seán Moran in Nowlan Park armed with a calculator. And Denis Walsh was in Cusack Park to witness three reds and 10 yellows in six-goal Cork’s trouncing of Clare. Limerick, meanwhile, haven’t gone away, you know, their 12-point win over Galway suggesting there’s life in them yet.
Elsewhere, Ken Early reflects on the petering out of Arsenal’s title challenge after that draw against Manchester United, all of which will add fuel to Mikel Arteta’s “growing faction of doubters”.
In horse racing, Denis Walsh rues the smothering of the romance of the Cheltenham Festival, reckoning that the dominance of the most successful yards, with underdog stories all but vanishing, has turned into “a suffocating stranglehold”.
And in golf, Philip Reid looks back on a disappointing weekend for Rory McIlroy at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and a frustrating one for Shane Lowry - he managed a seventh-place finish, but an error-strewn third round put the kibosh on his hopes of winning the tournament.
TV Watch: If you’re a glutton for punishment, then you can tune in to Against the Head this evening (RTE 2, 8.0) to see the high (and low) lights of the weekend’s Six Nations action. If you want to skip that agony, you can tune in to TG4 at the same time for the best of the weekend’s GAA league games. Or you can flick on Sky Sports Premier League to watch the meeting of West Ham and Newcastle.
