It says something of the impact Caitlin Clark is having on basketball in the United States that Dave Hannigan likens it to the effect a certain golfer once had on his sport. “This,” he writes, “is a woman poised to bring eyeballs to her sport in a way no athlete has managed since Tiger Woods turned every golf tournament into must-see TV, simultaneously transforming the earning power of all his peers.” The 22-year-old makes her professional debut next Tuesday, having excelled in the college game, and her arrival in the WNBA will see television audiences, broadcast rights deals and advertising spike. Basketball fans can’t get enough of her, one even asking her to autograph an ultrasound photograph of her unborn baby. No, really. Dave looks at how Clark is changing the face of her sport, and taking it to a whole new level.
Ciarán Murphy, meanwhile, has a schedule-tweaking suggestion for changing the face of the provincial championships, arguing that glorious days such as last Sunday, when a trophy and local bragging rights were on the line in the Connacht final, cannot be lost. So: “Play the four championships throughout the season, like the FA Cup in England, sprinkled into the fixture list every couple of weeks.”
Sligo, though, are still reeling from their stoppage time defeat to Galway in the Connacht semi-final, Paul Keane talking to their captain Niall Murphy about a loss that left him in “a state of shock”. And Paul also hears from Louth midfielder Tommy Durnin ahead of his county’s Leinster final meeting with Dublin. “It’s only impossible until it’s done so we’re going to give it our best shot,” he says of that formidable challenge.
Johnny Watterson doesn’t have good news for Leinster’s 12,800 season ticket holders – unless they’ve already bought a ticket for the Champions Cup final later this month, they’ll struggle to get their hands on one: Leinster’s official allocation is just 3,000.
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In golf, Philip Reid reports on Rory McIlroy somewhat oddly drawing an analogy between the Belfast Agreement and the schism in the golfing world, while Nathan Johns brings news that Ireland’s male cricketers have rejected contract offers made to them by the sport’s governing body.
TV Watch: Rory McIlroy is back in action at the Wells Fargo Championship which gets under way today (Sky Sports Golf, 12.30pm-11pm). And after the drama of last night’s Champions League semi-final between Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, the focus shifts to the Europa League and Conference League. There are three semi-finals this evening, all kicking off at 8pm – Olympiakos Piraeus v Aston Villa (TNT Sports 1 and Virgin Media Two), Bayer Leverkusen v Roma (TNT Sports 2 and Virgin Media More) and Atalanta v Marseille (TNT Sports 3).
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