1. “Is Ireland rugby country? Who cares. Let it feel like rugby country for six weeks. Let Ireland become GAA country for the summer. It can be a little enclave of breathless footballing obsession when the Irish team get close to a major tournament. It can get lost in tennis for a couple of weeks in July.
Kids can dig holes at the bottom of their gardens and rob a 9-iron and putter from a golf bag during Open week. We can all pick up where we left off as experts on Olympic sport every four years.
In a world where so much of normal life feels now like a swindle, indulging those simple uncluttered emotions through sport are good, positive, necessary things.”
Writing for The Times Ireland edition, Mick Foley argues that it is time to stop squabbling over whether this is Rugby Country or not and instead remember why sport is important.
2. “But the tug of home isn’t drawing Schmidt towards another dressing-room now. If anything, it’s pushing him away. While his coaching career is testament to a fastidious side, to his trust in detail and that technical gift for unlocking secret doors, there is a simple dignity communicated too of a man whose love of family will forever trump the game.
His son Luke’s struggles with epilepsy will be the unchallenged priority of Joe and Kellie Schmidt in 2020.
There will, he says, be no backward glances.”
Vincent Hogan of the Irish Independent profiles Joe Schmidt as the Long Goodbye begins in earnest.
3. “Kelly — an Everton fan — and Ian Byrne, a Liverpool supporter, had been part of a campaign to persuade the Premier League to cap prices on away tickets, and its success had convinced them that fans possessed an untapped power if they acted in unison. “It’s really important to take that tribal element out of it,” Kelly said.
They promote their work under the slogan “Hunger Doesn’t Wear Club Colors;” their volunteers collect food before every home game in the city, whether at Anfield, the home of Liverpool, or Everton’s Goodison Park.”
Rory Smith of the New York Times accentuates how football fans are coming together to fight the effects of government austerity.
4. “He nods in agreement; you are not fully formed at 12 years old, emotionally and physically tied to your mother, your father. If that world fractures you can too. Grief can become a disabler.
Wendy died just as he was starting in St Andrew’s College, in Booterstown in south Co Dublin. His first day was the day after her funeral. New surroundings, unfamiliar faces and living in a changed landscape meant he struggled. Unequipped to articulate his overarching sense of detachment, a sort of shutdown took over him. As he moved forward, the greatest conflict of this child’s life was unresolved.
On the crook of his left arm is a dove in flight with his mother’s name tattooed between the wings: Wendy.”
Irish prop Andrew Porter opens up on his adolescent tribulations with Johnny Watterson of The Irish Times.
5. “It is all deeply engrossing. But somehow it does not really fit the staging any more. With seven minutes left on the clock Sam Allardyce began to talk a little jarringly about austerity as the studio thrummed with confected excitement about “getting Michy Batshuayi over the line”. When will we start to resist?
English football has a tonal problem at moments such as these. The Premier League is obsessed with competitive spending, with the idea success really can be whistled up out of a shopping spree. This is its founding principle, Thatcherism in shorts.
It just seems increasingly jarring and vulgar. We are a cash-strapped nation these days, full of people working harder and longer and feeling ever more stretched.But wait. Here comes football again with its wasted millions, hat askew, a drunken lord gurgling down Pol Roger Sir Winston Churchill at the back of the bus as it trundles on towards the edge of the cliff.”
Transfer Deadline Day on Sky Sports News meets the pen of Barney Ronay for The Guardian.
