For some it can be the homesickness, for others they get carried away with suddenly having money while injuries and other factors can also have a major impact. These are all reasons why the majority young prospects who sign contracts with clubs in England don't last long. The harsh environment requires a particular type of players to navigate it, as well as a lot of luck. As Eamon Zayed tells Emmet Malone: "England breaks a lot of people." In part four of our series on youth players in Ireland, Emmet Malone speaks to a number who went to England only to return shortly after for a number of reasons. Whether the Premier League will finish this season is just one of the questions nobody knows the answer to but clubs will tomorrow hope to put some sort of certainty on it with a proposal to end the campaign on June 30th regardless of what happens. Meanwhile, in Scotland, Celtic have moved closer to a ninth title in a row after Dundee's voting u-turn ended all leagues below the top flight with standings as they are and the Premiership is very likely to follow.
On to rugby and Pro14 chief Martin Anayi remains confident that the season can have a finish despite many factors pointing to the contrary. All manner of contingency plans have been devised, ranging from one week to, ideally, an eight-week window which would begin with two rounds of derbies before the three playoff rounds, while also working in three playoff rounds of the two European competitions, writes Gerry Thornley. In the women's game, John O'Sullivan talks to 20-year-old Ireland secondrow Judy Bobbett about her switch from GAA to rugby and her favourite pastime away from the pitch – powerboating. In England, Owen Farrell and a number of other Saracens players are set to defer most of their wages to keep the club afloat while the All Blacks are facing a 50 per cent pay cut.
In our favourite sporting moments series this morning Sonia O'Sullivan remembers a night in 1988 when, as an 18-year-old who had just landed in the US to scope out universities, she saw fellow Cork native Marcus O'Sullivan win his second Wanamaker Mile. "It remains one of the clearest memories I have of any event I have watched as a spectator, the one event that showed me what was possible. I just had to work out how," she writes.
In GAA, Malachy Clerkin looks at the new ways the GPA are helping their members through the current crisis while, in our women in sport pages, Joanne O'Riordan speaks to Kely Nascimento-DeLuca, Pele's daughter, about her new film which looks at the myriad challenges facing women in football.
