The Irish Government has announced it may accelerate the lifting of coronavirus restrictions if the number of new cases continues to decline - and this morning Malachy Clerkin asks if the GAA might revisit its decision to keep all club grounds shut until July 20th. Sunday marked two months since the lockdown was imposed, and he suggests it could be harder to keep people away from pitches the more things improve. He writes: "Now that the news is apparently good - or at least less bad - keeping a lid on everyone's urges is a trickier task. If there's fewer than 2,000 cases in the country and the majority of them are in the cities, it gets harder and harder to tell people why they can't do something they see as not just harmless but good for them. Especially in rural areas."
The PGA Tour is set to resume at Colonial on June 11th, and Tiger Woods has confirmed he will be fit to play after recovering from a back injury. Woods proved his fitness as he held the winning putt in a Covid-19 charity match in Florida last night, as he and playing partner Peyton Manning beat Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady by one hole. The match raised €20 million for Covid-19 relief efforts, with Brady producing the shot of the day as he holed out for birdie on the seventh. Afterwards, Woods said: "I take my hat off to Tom and Peyton. This is our arena, this is what we do for a living. I couldn't imagine going on the field and do what they do," he added with a laugh."
Elsewhere this morning Seán Moran looks at the history of how diseases have affected the GAA and caused disruptions to games in the past - with TB, Spanish flu and polio all leaving their mark during the 20th century. He writes: "The GAA remembers the Cork polio outbreak [in 1956] because as fate would have it, all three of the county's senior teams, football, hurling and camogie, reached that year's All-Ireland finals. All three were lost but it goes down in the history books the last time until this year that finals had to be postponed."
Meanwhile in his column today Ken Early remembers the 2005 Champions League final for reasons other than the game, as he was given the moniker of 'Bamber Gascoigne' by travelling Liverpool supporters before finding himself in an Istanbul strip club.
And racing in the UK looks set to return on June 1st, with the BHA publishing its protocols for the sport to return behind closed doors over the weekend, with a fixture set for Newcastle on that date. Racing in Ireland is set to resume a week later on June 8th.
