1. The problems that existed prior to Sunday, within this Cork team and within Cork hurling in general, have not dissipated into the summer air and a victory up in Thurles will undoubtedly call for a doubling-down on the basics that secured a crucial two points down in Walsh Park last weekend. Further tinkering – to personnel, positions or playing style may also be required.
In three games so far, we’ve replaced our full-back, our centre-back, our midfield pairing and possibly now, even our talismanic free-taker. You’d have to wonder how many more in-flight repairs we can afford to make as we approach higher altitude.
You get the feeling that we are making it all up as we go along.
In his highly enjoyable blog, Bold Thady Quill, Eoin Keane charts Cork’s topsy-turvy Munster championship campaign.
2. There is no handbook for this sort of thing. The navigational app for picking your way through the morass of mourning has not yet been invented. But, if grief truly is the thing with feathers, sport might just be a comfort blanket, a fleeting diversion. The escape room of the broken heart. In a world spinning off its axis, we reach for old reliables. When so much else seems alien, there is solace in the familiar. Like the certain bounce of a ball.
Heartbreaking and powerful piece. Dave Hannigan in The Irish Times on how sport is the escape room of the broken heart.
3. Late on Monday evening, in the hotel where Oxford United’s players used to meet for their pre-match meal more than 30 years ago, Chris Allen is reminiscing about Joey Beauchamp — his friend, his former team-mate and a footballer who could have been whatever he wanted to be.
What Beauchamp wanted to be more than anything, though, was an Oxford United player. That he was far too good for them didn’t make a blind bit of difference to Beauchamp. It was his team, his city and his home, and he loved it there.
For The Athletic, the life and death of Joey Beauchamp, the footballing genius who didn’t want to be a hero.
4. Well played, Jake Daniels. Applause, please. And thank you for your leadership. Football, sport, male environments and, indeed, the wider world have all become slightly more sane places with the news that Daniels has decided to discuss publicly the fact that he is not only a professional footballer but a gay man.
The first part of this is, of course, not remarkable. The second part is. To those unfamiliar with football’s internal workings it might seen genuinely loopy that this should even be news, that a trailblazer is required, and indeed that this should turn out to be a teenager who made his debut for Blackpool two weeks ago. But make no mistake this is both a remarkable moment for men’s professional football and a sterling show of courage from a 17‑year‑old, yet to establish himself in his industry; but unwilling, as he says, “to pretend”.
For men’s football – and indeed men’s sport, professional and amateur – this is the sound of a wall being torn down.
The consistently brilliant Barney Ronay on young Blackpool forward Jake Daniels.
5. The grief takes her down to the black fathoms where no sunlight penetrates. She says it feels like there are weights attached to her wrists and ankles that drag her down to these unknown depths. It is a realm of constant suffering. She says she haunts her own house at night, walking around in a daze, submerged in this pitiless silence. She lives with Cassidy, her daughter, born seven years after Kevin, and their dog Max.
Her daughter, her sisters and brothers, her friends and neighbours; Kevin’s father, Kevin’s friends, his boxing family: this great circle of love and support has folded itself around her. They, too, have been profoundly affected, she explains. The bomb that imploded that night generated waves of hurt that rippled out and wounded all they touched. The damage inflicted by one act of evil has reverberated from its epicentre to the edges of an entire network of people.
Tommy Conlon in The Sunday Independent speaks to the brave Tracey Tully on the life and death of her son, Kevin Sheehy.
