1. Thirty years ago Roy Keane was either on the path to greatness or the road to disaster, depending on what British red-top newspaper you picked up on any particular day. “The hottest property in British soccer” as described by the Daily Mirror, was also the subject of a succession of lurid headlines ranging from his expulsion from nightclubs to unflattering details about his domestic arrangements in and around Nottingham, where Keane was clearly being closely watched from behind the net curtains. All wrapped up in the type of stereotypes which are now frowned upon in polite society.
Roy Keane: trials by tabloid (revisited), by Paul Rowan for The Times.
2. Frank is used to hard work — coaching Denmark under-17s, he would be up at 5.30am to go through match videos and make clips to show his players because he had no support staff — but, with this intensity, is it any wonder that just occasionally it bubbles over?
He was booked during Friday night’s victory over Brighton & Hove Albion after a minor altercation on the sidelines. “My wife is never proud of me when that happens and definitely not my youngest daughter. She texted her mum, ‘Dad is so embarrassing!’ So that’s not good,” he says, laughing. “But sometimes you just get sucked in…”
He explains that a big part of the job is the discipline to know how to focus on what matters which is why he talks once a week with a leadership mentor; a senior executive from Denmark who trains business high-fliers who is a wise old voice he has known for years.
“We speak about a lot of things, like how to keep your energy,” Frank says. “We have a phrase ‘constructive cynicism’. It is about making choices, what is good for me to make my day better, to be more efficient to make me a better leader. Do I need to be in this meeting? Do I need to take on that responsibility?”
The Times’ Matt Dickinson meets Brentford manager Thomas Frank.
3. Three years ago, Aramco, the oil giant predominantly owned by the Saudi royal family, underwent a subtle rebrand. And subtle is the operative word here: the company’s distinctive logo, a white star on a blue and green background, remained in place. But somehow the blue was rendered just a little bluer, the green just a little greener, the typeface softened into grey lowercase, the word “Saudi” and the Arabic script above it quietly removed.
This was the logo upon which Sam Curran stood as he prepared to bowl for England against Pakistan in their final Twenty20 World Cup warm-up on Monday, a little heap of sawdust at his feet. At the boundary’s edge, a band of Aramco billboards – blue as blue as the sky, green as green as life – flickered into the Brisbane night. Curran examined the ball in his hands, launched into his hop-skip approach and fixed his gaze on a set of Aramco-branded stumps about 40 yards away.
‘Aramco cricket deal again proves sport will ignore reality for revenue,’ writes Jonathan Liew for The Telegraph.
4. Dotted around that part of Hampden’s South Stand, it wasn’t hard to pick out all the other families. Stuck to the back wall near where Shawn Brosnan watched the game, a handmade poster read: “I’m Jamie Finn’s sister.” The next row down, a line of Irish fans in jerseys stood side by side, each one of them with Caldwell 7 on the back.
The McCabes were down a bit closer to the pitch — Katie’s father Gary, her mother Sharon, her kid sister Lauryn, already an Ireland under-16 player. “Yeah, I think they paid about a grand on flights — Ryanair doing them!” the Ireland captain laughed afterwards, as the celebrations began and the fuzz and fog of disbelief at what they’d just achieved began to lift. “But they got here.”
Here, at Hampden Park, on the southside of Glasgow. Here, on the night they made the World Cup. Here, at the end of a campaign that changes forever what is expected of women’s football in Ireland and what can reasonably be hoped for by those who come after them.
The Irish Times’ Malachy Clerkin reflects on Ireland’s monumental World Cup play-off win and explains how generations of girls will be in the team’s debt.
5. Though grassroots soccer here and in Britain has seen plenty aggro, the GAA has been in the headlines partly because of questions over its disciplinary processes. Following a high-profile incident in the county, Wexford GAA have called on Croke Park to allow lifetime bans instead of the maximum 96 weeks currently permitted.
On the flip-side, a hearings committee in Mayo overturned a decision to kick Westport GAA out of the county’s U17 championship after a club member got involved in a rammy with a rival Castlebar player. There were saloon bars in the Wild West where it was easier to get thrown out for fighting than is sometimes the case in the GAA.
Tommy Martin in the Irish Examiner asks is being human enough of an excuse for losing the rag at sport?
