Hallelujah, skorts-gate is over. “After 121 years, it only took the Camogie Association a little under half an hour to make history at Croke Park on Thursday night,” writes Gordon Manning, 98 per cent of the Special Congress delegates backing a motion allowing players the choice of wearing shorts or skorts. Gordon’s mission, should he choose to accept it, is to track down the two per cent and ask ‘what were ye thinking?’
Joe Canning is wondering what the Cork hurlers were thinking when they played Limerick last weekend. Were they playing “a long game”, keeping their powder dry until they, possibly, meet Limerick again in the championship? If so, “that is a risky business,” says Joe, “if they don’t beat Waterford at home on Sunday their season is over”.
Mathew Costello is hoping there’s plenty left in Meath’s season yet, Gordon talking to the forward ahead of the start of his county’s round-robin campaign at home to Cork in Navan on Saturday.
In soccer, Gavin Cummiskey hears Colin Healy stand by his charge that the FAI’s outgoing chief football officer Marc Canham and its chief executive David Courell lied about the nature of his departure from his role as assistant coach to the Republic of Ireland women’s team.
Skorts-gate finally over as sanity prevails
‘Guys are segregated at Shels v Bohs and the next morning they’re together at Na Fianna’: ‘Mossy’ Quinn adapting to new Shelbourne CEO role
Hurling Man shifts uneasily as football gets mysteriously entertaining
Darragh Ó Sé: Galway won’t be down after Dubs defeat - now is the time to get battle-hardened
Gavin also talked with new Shelbourne CEO Tomás “Mossy” Quinn, the Dublin All-Ireland winner who, having switched football codes, is now trying to guide the club through the challenges ahead, among them ensuring Tolka Park meets Champions League standards.
In rugby, former Irish captain Ciarán Fitzgerald tells Gerry Thornley about the “Spirit of Garbally” campaign, the aim to ensure that the name of his famous alma mater is incorporated in to the title of the new amalgamated Ballinasloe schools, Ardscoil Mhuire and St Joseph’s College, Garbally Park. For now, it is to be known as Clonfert College.
Gerry also has news that Leinster plan on hosting this season’s URC final at Croke Park ... if – and it’s a big one – they actually reach the final. First they have to negotiate a passage past Scarlets in the quarter-finals and, if successful, whoever they might meet in the last four.
Johnny Watterson, meanwhile, brings us the grim tale of the “Enhanced Games”, a sporting freak show with a cast of drugged-up athletes, which are scheduled to take place in Las Vegas next year. “A poorly designed drug trial with no ethical oversight, it will,” he writes, “be a ripping success if the athletes do better than Barnum‘s belugas and some don’t die.”
Shane Stokes has the latest from the Rás Tailteann, Cycling Ulster’s Odhrán Doogan slipping in to the yellow jersey on Thursday, while Brian O’Connor retraces the story of the redevelopment of the Curragh. “It is a modern facility, which, by most measures, is lovely to look at. It is also, by most measures, predominantly unloved.”
TV Watch: Following Wednesday’s 124-run victory, Ireland play the West Indies in the second of their three-match one day international series in Clontarf (TNT Sports 1 from 10.30am). Kerry and Cork meet in this evening’s Munster minor football final (TG4, 7.30) and St Patrick’s Athletic host Waterford in the Premier Division (Virgin Media Two, 7.45).
