The first challenge for Henry Shefflin when he arrives in Nowlan Park on Sunday will be to remember to enter the away dressing room. Having graced the stadium “either in the black and amber of Kilkenny or the green and white of Ballyhale Shamrocks” for many a year, he takes his Galway charges there for the first time since he became their manager.
Gordon Manning anticipates a warm welcome for King Henry, although perhaps not a fond farewell if he heads out the door with a victory. There’s unlikely, though, to be a repeat of handshake-gate, Shefflin “pally” with Derek Lyng, his former Kilkenny comrade who succeeded Brian Cody.
Whatever the outcome of the game, Joe Canning is fairly sure the teams will meet again in the Leinster final in a few weeks, although that’s about all he’s fairly sure about, the opening weekend of the hurling championship leaving him with more questions than answers.
Also in Gaelic games, Sean Moran hears from Tyrone full-back Ronan McNamee ahead of the Darkness into Light fundraiser run by suicide prevention charity Pieta House, for whom he is an ambassador. McNamee has spoken about his own mental health battles in recent years, football no small help in his recovery because of the “structure” it brings to his life.
In rugby, Johnny Watterson was half expecting a “bite-the-tongue, stay-schtum-and-move-along week” from Leo Cullen, but instead the Leinster coach opted to “bite back” at the recent comments from Ulster’s Dan McFarland and Leicester’s Richard Wigglesworth. As Johnny asks, how come demographics weren’t a factor when Leinster were losing?
It is, after all, five seasons since they lifted the Champions Cup, Gerry Thornley talking to Dan Sheehan, one of “a voracious batch of players” in the squad who have yet to win the competition. Sheehan was one of the ‘frontliners’ left in Dublin when Leinster travelled to South Africa for their URC games. How did he pass the time? “Eating.”
John O’Sullivan, meanwhile, hears from Ugo Mola ahead of Saturday’s semi-final, the Toulouse head coach having busied himself of late studying the recent Six Nations game between Ireland and France to look for clues on how to stifle Leinster. And John puts on his analyst’s hat to look at how Leinster might stifle Toulouse, expecting them to mix things up a little more, reckoning they “might tweak that orientation to kick for territory or to contest aerially more than they have tended to do”.
Willie Mullins doesn’t need to tweak anything at all, the champion trainer’s season going from outstanding to out-of-this-world. On Thursday, Brian O’Connor tells us, he smashed his own Irish prize money record with a Punchestown four-timer, bringing his season’s winnings to over €6.6m. If it ain’t broke, don’t tweak it.
Telly watch: RTÉ2 has more coverage of the Punchestown Festival (4.0-7.0), BBC2 and Eurosport bring us the World Snooker Championships semi-finals through the day, and this evening TG4 has live coverage of the Munster Under-20 Hurling Championship meeting of Limerick and Cork (7.20).
