1. The former Galway county councillor and senator Jarlath McDonagh was approached by Phelim before the 1987 decider to request that the road down to the house be widened.
“He said to me, ‘If you don’t get the road widened, there will be a crash because there are so many people coming looking for tickets’. He also asked that a light be put up outside the house because they were queuing in the darkness,” recalls McDonagh, himself a Turloughmore native and the man who succeeded Phelim as club chairman when the latter moved on from the role after 21 years service.
“The road is a highway down to the house now and the light stands there flickering away, a monument to Phelim.”
Eoghan Cormican remembers the late Phelim Murphy in The Irish Examiner.
2. The details are shocking but, to those who know gymnastics, they are unlikely to be surprising. Little that is in the review has not been spoken of before, including the most upsetting allegations of weight-shaming, pushing gymnasts into physical pain and distress, and the crushing mental-health impacts on the girls and women who have been subjected to abuse.
The report will, however, provide welcome vindication and support for those who have bravely raised their voices over the past two years to tell the truth about their experiences, despite fear of retribution, punishment, ostracism, and, for some, the potential end of their sporting careers.
3. In the words of one Premier League recruitment lead, Pimenta is “the most important football person nobody knows about” while another source in the agent world described her as “the most powerful woman in football now”. In Pogba’s new documentary (sorry, Pogmentary), he describes her to his children as “Auntie Rafa”, but the aforementioned agent also warned she is the “toughest negotiator in football”, ranking her alongside the Israeli intermediary Pini Zahavi.
Pimenta, a Brazilian lawyer, worked alongside Raiola for over 20 years and is now running the empire.
Adam Crafton of The Athletic on Rafaela Pimenta, the heiress to Mino Raiola’s empire. (€)
4. The reality is, sadly, that sometimes as people, we will suffer. If someone loses when playing the national lottery, they rip their ticket up and try again, or remain disheartened, jealous of winners, ranting to friends about how it ‘should have been them.’ It hurts for a while. For Simiso Buthelezi, losing when fighting last weekend meant everything, as the fighter passed away in a Durban hospital after suffering a bleed on the brain during the closing stages of the bout, not before having his final act shared to tens of millions across all social media platforms.
“Bizarre,” “The strangest thing I’ve seen,” “Cursed,” and “Damaged.” Comments from the entire world over. And now, silence. Pain, suffering, and the permanence of death.
5. Just like the champion Golden State teams of 2015, 2017 and 2018, these Warriors were accurate, efficient, ruthless and relentless. But they were also curiously likable. This marks a real departure for a team that had, in recent years, come to seem like the embodiment of everything bad about the modern NBA. Though it may be a strange thing to say about a franchise that has now won exactly half of the rings on offer over the past eight seasons, the depth of the Warriors’ pandemic-era decline and the uncertainty that once surrounded their biggest stars’ prospects of revival are enough to make this championship a genuine feelgood story – not quite a victory for the underdog, but a glowing tribute to what tech billions, the greatest shooter in basketball history, and simple persistence can achieve together.
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