Well, have you got your breath back yet after Sunday’s conclusion to the Ryder Cup? No? Well, it’s unlikely that Shane Lowry has either after he joined the likes of Eamonn Darcy, Philip Walton, Paul McGinley, Darren Clarke and Graeme McDowell in the list of Irish players who have had a sizeable impact on the outcome of the competition down the years. Philip Reid salutes the man who “has brought that DNA of team sport into his own field of dreams”.
“Lowry now follows in the footsteps of so many Irish before him in having his defining Ryder Cup moment,” writes David Gorman in his ‘five things we learned’ from the weekend, Philip reckoning that one of them is the need to have zero tolerance in the future for abusive members of the crowd. This was Philip’s 15th Ryder Cup - in terms of “unacceptable behaviour”, nothing, he writes, compared to it.
Mercifully, there were no such issues at Croke Park on Sunday when the Steelers and Vikings came to town, Gordon Manning talking to Peter McKenna, the stadium’s commercial director, about his hopes for the venue hosting another NFL game soon.
Come Saturday, Croke Park will be in hosting mode again, this time for a special congress that will pass final judgment on the Football Review Committee’s rule changes. This one is, then, necessary, but Seán Moran wonders if they’re overused - this will be the sixth special congress in seven years.
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In rugby, everyone at Leinster is “scratching their heads with regard to where Friday night came from”. So said Robin McBryde about that 35-0 URC thumping by the Stormers, Johnny Watterson hearing from the assistant coach ahead of Saturday’s meeting with the Bulls in Pretoria.
Connacht have a spring in their step, though, after opening their URC campaign with a win over Benetton. “A lot to improve on, but a good start,” head coach Stuart Lancaster tells Linley MacKenzie, Scarlets next up at Dexcom Stadium on Saturday.
TV Watch: The pick of today’s Champions League games? How about the one they’re calling the biggest mismatch in the competition’s history: Kazakhstan’s Kairat v Spain’s Real Madrid (Virgin Media Two and TNT Sports 2, 5.45). Put it this way - Kairat’s entire squad is valued at less than half of Kylian Mbappe’s salary.
Three English clubs are in action too, Chelsea welcoming a certain Jose Mourinho, now in charge of Benfica, back to his old stomping ground (Virgin Media Two and TNT Sports 1). Norway’s Bodø/Glimt host Tottenham (TNT Sports 2) and Galatasaray welcome Liverpool to hell in Istanbul (Premier Sports 1) - all three kick off at 8pm this evening.
