The financial cost of the current crisis to all of sport is, it's widely accepted, going to be sizeable but this morning Gavin Cummiskey reports that Munster Rugby could suffer particularly badly as they will be unable to pay off their Thomond Park loan with no supporters at matches. The province followed Leinster yesterday in suspending renewals of season tickets for the 2020/21 campaign and it is the outstanding €6.9 million loan owed to the IRFU that could be a problem. Meanwhile, Gerry Thornley writes this morning that many rugby players are using this enforced time off to look to the future and think about what they might do after they finish playing. "The more a player invests in his future during his career then the more beneficial it will be, both in the shorter-term and the longer term," he writes.
Moving on and there was live football from Germany last night as Joshua Kimmich's inspired chip saw Bayern Munich squeeze past Borussia Dortmund in what was one of the best matches played behind closed doors since the Bundesliga restarted. In her TV View column Mary Hannigan is not so enamoured with James Richardston's studio clichés or, indeed, the Zoom calls into the station from fans but seeing Bayern Munich win a big match was a nice familiar feeling of normality. Meanwhile, the Saudi Arabia-backed takeover of Newcastle United looks to be in serious doubt after the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ruled that the country is behind a pirate satellite TV and streaming service that offers illegal access to sporting events. The doubt now is whether the takeover bid will pass the Premier League's owners' and directors' test.
Moving on and if you like looking at sports photographs that don't actually feature any live sporting action then the imagination of Inpho's photographers over the last few months will get you going. From James Crombie's now famous shot of the "hurler on the moon" to the reopening of the Forty Foot the company's snappers have reinvented themselves and this morning Malachy Clerkin speaks to a few with a selection of the best shots included. Meanwhile, in GAA, Seán Moran writes in his column this morning that John Horan's cautious approach is coming under more pressure as coronavirus news looks to be getting more positive. The president stated a few weeks ago that matches could not take place with social distancing still in force but now the GAA may need to reinforce message that in this pandemic there's still a long way to go.
Finally, it might come as a surprise but John McEnroe is now the inner voice of a 15-year-old girl. In a new Netflix series called Never Have I Ever, one of the greatest tennis players (and hotheads) of all time, is somehow the narrator for the life and the inner voice of Devi Vishwakumar, a 15-year-old boy-crazy Indian American girl from the San Fernando Valley
