Gordon Manning would have been forgiven if his match report on the All Ireland club semi-final in Newry amounted to just three words – “Glen won, apparently” – but, somehow, he managed to sum up a game that was largely hidden behind a wall of fog. “The story of the day was difficult to see as it unfolded,” he writes, with even the players having to engage in a spot the ball competition. “You were looking up the pitch wondering what side it was coming,” as Glen defender Michael Warnock put it afterwards. It was, reckoned Kilmacud Crokes manager Robbie Brennan, “bananas” for the game to go ahead, but he had no complaints about the result, conceding that Glen were the better team.
The visibility in Thurles was decidedly better, so Denis Walsh was at least able to witness St Brigid’s see off the challenge of Castlehaven in the first of the day’s semi-finals. Although it wasn’t entirely smooth sailing for the Roscommon club – “they couldn’t miss and then they couldn’t hit a barn door with a banjo,” says Denis of their “bipolar performance”. They got there in the end, though.
Speaking of barn doors and banjos: Arsenal. Kai Havertz, in particular. After watching his latest outing, in Sunday’s 2-0 FA Cup defeat by Liverpool, his “most wretched yet” for the club, Ken Early concludes that his signing last summer “looks like the rock this Arsenal season will perish on”. “It’s not just because he has played even worse in his first season for Arsenal than he did in his last season at Chelsea,” he writes, “it’s because spending £60 million on him cost them the opportunity to improve the team in some other way.” That’s Ken off Kai’s Christmas card list.
Also in football, Denis, once he defrosted after his Thurles trip, turned his attention to the hunt for a successor to Stephen Kenny and wonders why Chris Hughton’s name “hasn’t generated any groundswell of support”. He has, after all, a mountain of managerial experience, including spells at three different Premier League clubs, Newcastle, Norwich and Brighton.
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And in rugby, Johnny Watterson takes us through the Champions Cup state of play for the Irish competitors ahead of the resumption of their campaigns next Saturday, with Leinster sitting pretty in their pool after winning their opening two games, but Ulster, Munster and Connacht all with work to do.
TV Watch: The last of the FA Cup third round matches is on tonight, Wigan Athletic aiming to avoid an upset when they host strugglers Manchester United (UTV & Premier Sports 1, kick-off 8.15pm).
