Good morning,
It was back in 2002 that Trevor Brennan set off for Toulouse with the intention of playing for them for a couple of seasons before returning home. Twenty-one years later and he’s still there, although he’ll be paying a flying visit to Dublin at the weekend – he’ll be on board the charter flight taking the squad to their Champions Cup semi-final against Leinster.
Which of his former employers will he be rooting for? “I’d be 110 per cent for Toulouse,” he tells Gerry Thornley. “Leinster gave me my first chance, and Toulouse gave me my second – not just in rugby, but in life.”
There’ll be no participation trophy for whoever loses on Saturday, which would, no doubt, please the three North Carolina senators who have been railing against the award of these very things, notably to kids in youth sports. Why? As Dave Hannigan explains, they’re being blamed “for softening up generations of boys and girls, stymieing entrepreneurship, and promoting socialism”. He’s not joking either.
As we all know, the biggest problem in youth sports isn’t participation trophies, it’s parents losing their minds on the sidelines. “You see mad men and mad women going bonkers along the line for no reason because they feel the referee is wrong, inappropriately going absolutely crackers,” referee Maggie Farrelly tells Ian O’Riordan.
The ultimate ambition for the Cavan woman, who has made a series of refereeing firsts over the last 10 years, is to take charge of a men’s All Ireland final. Mayo’s ultimate ambition is to win one. Lee Keegan, who retired back in January, still sees his former comrades as contenders this year, but, he tells Gordon Manning, he reckons “the noises coming from the capital carry an air of foreboding”. The Jacks, he fears, might just be back.
Gordon, though, might not be back in work for a week after being tasked with explaining this year’s “newfangled” All-Ireland and Tailteann Cup formats, a task akin to our old maths teachers trying to explain Pythagoras’ theorem to us. In hurling, meanwhile, Ciarán Murphy has zero sympathy for counties who exit the Championship in the round-robins because, on the whole, they get “exactly what they deserve”.
And in horse racing, Brian O’Connor reflects on Galopin Des Champs’ shock defeat in the Punchestown Gold Cup on Wednesday, 20-1 chance Fastorslow leaving the jaws of the 20,356 people in attendance on the floor with his triumph.
Telly watch: It’s day three of the Punchestown Festival and RTÉ2 has coverage from 4.0 to 7.0, while BT Sports bring us three Premier League games tonight across three channels – Spurs v Manchester United (kick-off 8.15), Everton v Newcastle (7.45) and Southampton v Bournemouth (7.45).
