Good morning,
By beating Australia in Sydney on Wednesday, “England,” writes Jonathan Liew, “moved one step closer to a peak they have been trying and failing to scale for 30 years”. Spain now stand between them and the summit, the teams meeting in Sunday’s World Cup final.
It was a performance that was “nerveless and efficient in all the right places”, not even Sam Kerr’s wonder strike ruffling England’s feathers, but the Spanish, “with their technical skill and sophisticated passing patterns”, will provide an entirely new challenge.
While England and Spain will stay in Australia for the duration of the tournament, defending champions the United States have long since gone home. Dave Hannigan looks at the roots of the team’s failure, chiefly that the game in the States “remains a country club sport beyond the reach of the majority”. As a result, the rest of the world hasn’t just caught up with their national team, they’ve overtaken them.
Andy Farrell would very much like Ireland’s World Cup stay in France to extend all the way to the end of October, Saturday’s meeting with England in Dublin the latest step in their build-up to the tournament.
Gerry Thornley is expecting the coach to name the vast bulk of the team that sealed the Grand Slam by beating England back in March, although “there may be one or two interesting exceptions, such as Cian Prendergast starting at number 8″.
Daire Walsh, meanwhile, heard from Paul O’Connell, Ireland’s forwards coach, on how cutting edge technology, in the form of something called a 5G Mobile Private Network, is helping the team’s preparations by providing “real-time video analytics”.
If similar technology was used to analyse Ciarán Murphy’s surprise (emergency) appearance in goal for his club’s senior Gaelic football team, when he’s usually a full forward for their seconds, there’s a fair chance it would turn out to be his last. The fact that his manager cleared him to write a column about the experience does indeed suggest that there won’t be a second call-up.
In athletics, Ian O’Riordan talks to Sligo runner Chris O’Donnell who is targeting a third successive global championship final for Ireland’s mixed 4x400m relay team at the World Championships, which get under way in Budapest on Saturday.
And Philip Reid previews this week’s golf action which includes Leona Maguire’s appearance at the ISPS Handa World Invitational in Northern Ireland where she will be the top-ranked player.
Telly watch: The BMW Championship, the second leg of the FedEx Cup play-offs, gets under way today in Chicago (Sky Sports Golf, 6.0-11.0), only the top 30 in the standings after the tournament making it through to next week’s Tour Championship in Atlanta. Rory McIlroy is comfortable at third in the list, but Seamus Power is at 35 so has work to do.
