It was a dream start to the Junior World Championships for the Ireland under-20s last night as they overcame England in a thriller to take pole position in their pool. Noel McNamara's Grand Slam champions never took a step backwards against a gargantuan England side, scoring six tries on their way to a 42-26 victory in Santa Fe. Ireland now roll on towards the second game of the tournament which sees them face Australia on Saturday. For a full guide to all of the pools you can read John O'Sullivan's breakdown.
On to soccer and Juventus have told Manchester United that they are interested in re-signing Paul Pogba. The French midfielder has been linked with a move away from the English club despite Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's repeated desires to build his team around him. It has now emerged that the Italian club would be interested in taking the midfielder back to Turin while they are also looking to pay off the rest of Mauruzio Sarri's contract at Chelsea in order to install the Italian as a replacement for Massimiliano Allegri. This week the focus is on international action with Ireland set to meet Denmark in Copenhagen on Friday and Gibraltar back in Dublin on Tuesday. Speaking yesterday Mick McCarthy said the ongoing crisis at the FAI has had no effect on the players. "I think if as a footballer you let all those daily things influence you to play badly, not play as well as you should, you're not going to have a really good career. They're all professionals (and) they're going to do their job," he said. Conor Hourihane looks set to be a key part of the Ireland midfield for the year to come and the Aston Villa man – who recently secured promotion to the Premier League – believes his route to the top from Sunderland to Ipswich Town to Plymouth Argyle to Barnsley and now to Aston Villa has helped him realise just how tough it is to make it. "That's the sad thing to see – lads don't realise it. They're working harder on the table tennis table than they do in training, and that's the honest truth," the Cork man says.
In GAA, Darragh Ó Sé writes in his column this morning that the quality of the Ulster championship so far this year has been a joy to watch and it comes from the fact that the provincial championship still matters up there. Cavan and Armagh's ding-dong battle in Clones on Sunday wasa gripping encounter and it's not the first that has put paid to the boring stereotypes that were associated with Ulster football. "At different times in the noughties, you could see that Tyrone and Armagh were happy enough to win it but knew it wasn't going to matter to them come the end of the year. That's not the case anymore. Tyrone and Donegal would give their right arm for an Ulster title, no more and no less than Armagh and Cavan would," he writes. Meanwhile, Seán Moran is looking at the hurling championship and says that the format does not need to be changed just yet simply because this year's round-robin is not as exciting as last year's. "This year has been no stranger to the GAA's problem of short-termism, the process that inevitably accompanies attempted reform," he writes.
On to boxing and it looks like Anthony Joshua will get the chance to reclaim the heavyweight title belts he lost to Andy Ruiz Jr by the end of the year. The English boxer suffered a shock defeat to the Mexican at Madison Square Garden in the early hours of Sunday morning but Joshua's promoter Eddie Hearn announced the contracted rematch clause was triggered on Tuesday and the second fight will take place in November or December, with a venue still to be confirmed.
