1. If Pacquiao wanted a better shot at a higher office, this alliance appeared to work, for him, at least early into his political dance with Duterte. Only a few years ago, at the boxer’s lavish 40th birthday party, the president floated the notion that the boxer could succeed him. Now, Duterte is calling his old pal a “s—” in weekly addresses to a nation fighting a global pandemic.
And, Trillanes says, “Right now, he is waging a war against Manny Pacquiao.”
For Sports Illustrated, Greg Bishop looks at the complicated relationship between presidential hopeful Manny Pacquiao and current president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte.
2. The Burrows have accepted the diagnosis of MND, which they received on a shattering day in December 2019, but Rob continues to fight the medical prognosis that suggested he had two years to live. “Throughout his career Rob defied the odds against him [at 5ft 4in and weighing less than 10st he was invariably the smallest man on the pitch] and he’s determined to defy the odds again,” Lindsey says. “He said: ‘If the doctor gives you two years to live then double that with me.’ That’s Rob’s philosophy.”
“Absolutely,” Rob says. “I never feel I will be out of here before I am done.”
For The Guardian, Donald McRae meets Rob Burrow and his wife Lindsey as the former rugby league star discusses living with motor neurone disease.
3. “Earlier, I called one of our players in Afghanistan. She was hiding and she was crying on the phone. I felt so helpless, so hopeless. I don’t know what to do. Back in the days when I was a captain, I was trying to encourage all my players to just never lose hope: ‘We’ve got this and there’s a bright future’. But I can’t say those words any more. And it hurts me.”
Former captain of the Afghanistan women’s national football team, Shamila Kohestani, talks to The Athletic’s Katie Whyatt about the current situation in the country after the Taliban seized power. (€)
4. You have to go back to 1994 when Ireland last won something like this when current coach Mark Keenan captained a senior squad to what was then known as the Promotions Cup.
And for even further context you only have to go back to as recently as four months ago. Back then it was doubtful if Ireland would be able to participate in any European tournament this summer let alone host one. Over half of Keenan’s squad hadn’t played a competitive game in more than a year and gone six months without so much as even being able to train with a teammate.
In The Irish Examiner, Kieran Shannon looks at the difficulties facing basketball in Ireland following success for the men’s national team in the FIBA European Championships for Small Nations last weekend.
5. Those of us not from Cork – and there are billions of us – can’t ever expect to truly understand the place. Cork city’s facility for excelling at sports is bewildering. It is, of course, a hurling city. But it’s also a soccer town and it’s a basketball labyrinth. The county has produced the iconic modern Irish track athlete in Sonia O’Sullivan and every word of Roy Keane’s waspish, funny football observations can be traced back to the streets of Cork city.
The pubs and streets are tripping up with local sporting gods and legends. But the truly intimidating thing about the city is that if you so desire, it will present itself as a music town, as a waterside winter dream, as a literary haunt and as a photograph, through which all visitors move, all shadows and angles. It’s whatever you want it to be.
In The Irish Times, Keith Duggan look at the new wave of irrepressible Cork hurling happiness.
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