It was only last month that FAI chief executive David Courell declared that “we are at the top table of women’s football now, and we want to stay there”. But Tuesday night’s defeat by Wales in the Euro 2025 qualifying play-offs means that Ireland have vacated their seat at that table. Gavin Cummiskey looks at what’s next for the women’s game here, a lack of investment in its grassroots continuing to limit what it can achieve.
The FAI’s most immediate task is to decide whether to retain the services of head coach Eileen Gleeson, or “loosen the purse strings to hire someone they consider more likely to guide Ireland to the Brazil World Cup in 2027″. Karen Duggan feels it “would make sense to part ways” with Gleeson now, but has her doubts that the funds are there to replace her. “Ultimately, this was a failure,” she writes, Karen left feeling that qualifying for the 2023 World Cup was “a flash in the pan” rather than the start of something big for this Irish team.
In Gaelic games, Ciarán Murphy is finding the progress of the Football Review Committee’s efforts to improve the game as a spectacle “massively exciting”, and reckons that hurling could do with a similar experiment if it’s to grow beyond its traditional nine or 10 counties.
Paul Keane, meanwhile, listened in on a chat between Kerry GAA’s high-performance manager Jason McGahan and Mike Quirke on the latter’s podcast, Quirke having stepped away from the Kerry management set-up during the summer. McGahan’s chief “bugbear” is the fast-tracking of young players to ‘adulthood’ before “these athletes are physically and mentally ready for it”.
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In rugby, Johnny Watterson talks to Jack Crowley ahead of Munster’s Champions Cup game against Stade Francais on Saturday, the outhalf reflecting on Ireland’s Autumn Nations Series when, of course, so much of the focus was on his battle with Sam Prendergast for the number 10 shirt.
And in his America at Large column, Dave Hannigan forecasts that, despite his “most recent disgrace”, Conor McGregor will be welcomed back with open arms Stateside, a place where “allegations about attacking women are no longer regarded as career-enders, more as colourful entries on a resume”. “Nothing,” he writes, “makes America great again like embracing an athlete who has committed crimes against women”.
TV Watch: Tom McKibbin gets his DP World Tour season under way at the Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa (Sky Sports Golf, 9am-2.30), and later in the evening there are two Premier League games to choose from, Fulham v Brighton (Amazon Prime, 7.30) and Bournemouth v Spurs (Premier Sports 1, 8.15).
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