After last weekend's hurling drama, football again takes centre stage this weekend with the Super 8s down for decision – before Clare and Galway meet in their SHC semi-final, of course. Monaghan know that they hold their fate in their own own hands when they meet Galway on Saturday while Kerry must beat Kildare and hope that Galway can spoil the Monaghan party. "It is a rare sensation for Kerry teams, preparing to try to win a game for a semi-final that may well happen without them," writes Jim McGuinness in his column this morning. Football has moved on so much that, McGuinness reckons "it is no longer good enough to simply have really good players. You need a clear, detailed plan for every phase of play. Teams are better schooled than ever before." Meanwhile, the hurling replay between Galway and Clare has caused some havoc with television schedules with the dead-rubber of Dublin v Roscommon consigned to RTÉ News Now with RTÉ One showing the clash of Donegal and Tyrone who will compete to join the Dubs in the quarter-finals.
On to hockey and the build-up continues towards Ireland's women's hockey team's historic World Cup quarter-final meeting this Thursday with their opponents set to be decided tonight when India take on Italy. This has been a legacy-creating few weeks for the team and they are determined to do just that with manager Graham Shaw and the players well aware that this time in the spotlight for an otherwise minority sport is absolutely invaluable. "It's what we have aimed to do since we started playing international hockey," Shaw said. "The girls set out to create a legacy, to inspire young players to play our sport."
The Galway Races got underway yesterday on a sunny evening in Ballybrit with Ruby Walsh thrilling punters in the very first race as he came home on board Easy Game in the very first race of the festival to mark his return to action from a broken leg. In the big race of the night Aubrey McMahon once again defied Patrick Mullins to win the 'amateur's Derby' for the second year in a row when he rode Uradel to the title ahead of his rival on board Limini. Tonight a duo of Scottish raiders will look to claim the feature with Baraweez and What's The Story looking good for the €120,000 Colm Quinn BMW Mile.
In hurling, the Clare county board chairman Joe Cooney has branded the ticketing system for this weekend's All-Ireland SHC semi-final replay with Galway as 'a joke' after the GAA announced that they would not distribute tickets through clubs, leading to long queues both online and at ticket offices. "It is a joke, there are a lot of genuine supporters out there especially elderly people who can't go online to order their tickets. I believe there are big queues [at official outlets like Centra], I was talking to a man who had to wait two hours online before his turn came around."
Meanwhile, Limerick are doing all they can to quell the hype of reaching the All-Ireland final with manager John Kiely intent on keeping his players focused over the next three weeks. The squad is as tight-knit as you can get with captain Declan Hannon explaining how they don't play many challenge matches and instead like to keep everything in-house.
