Rowing: National champions Garda, with a full-strength crew and a 10-day training stint in Spain under their belts, should be the clear favourites to lift the men's senior eights title at the Neptune regatta tomorrow, writes Liam Gorman.
John Dillon, at stroke, comes into the Garda crew for Tommy Colsh, but this may not weaken a unit which had such an outstanding victory in the championships at Iniscarra last year.
Hosts Neptune are, however, rebuilding. Only three men who will sit into the boat tomorrow are seniors: stroke Neil Casey - fresh from his outstanding win with UCD, where he is a second year Commerce student, in the Gannon Cup - Neville Maxwell and ex-UCG man Pauric Lowry.
Sean Jacob, Ciaran Lewis and Derek Holland are at present training in France with Queen's Tower and Albert Maher is based in South Africa.
Neptune are drawn to face Trinity at 10.45, with the winners taking on St Michael's in the semi-final at 1.44 p.m. St Michael's, who did well at intermediate level last year, might fancy their chances of progressing to meet the winners of the second semi-final between Cork and Garda (1.47 p.m.). The final is scheduled for 5.56 p.m.
Much of the entry for the regatta will compete again in the Commercial regatta on Sunday.
Equestrian Sport: Peter Charles, who finished sixth in last year's World Cup show jumping finals in Las Vegas, is a definite non-starter at next week's finals in Sweden, writes Grania Willis.
The Hampshire-based show jumper officially withdrew his horses from the Gothenburg fixture yesterday morning, despite the fact that the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture has now lifted the ban on equine transport in Holland.
Charles' top three horses had been stranded in Holland for the past fortnight following the imposition of the livestock movement ban when foot-and-mouth was confirmed in the country.
Charles made his decision to pull out as his three Traxdata sponsored horses have missed too much work.
This leaves Jessica Kurten, who this week overtook Charles as top-ranked Irish rider when moving to 19th in the world standings, as the lone Irish representative in Gothenburg.
Tennis: Qualifier Jon Doran reached the quarter-finals of the Brisbane Unity International in Queensland yesterday. Doran, who won his first round tie against Australia's Jason Sellin 6-1 6-2, beat German qualifier Simon Greul 6-2 6-4. Conor Niland, who won his opener against Alun Jones (Australia) 6-4 6-3 lost to Swedish third seed Kalle Flygt 6-3 6-0.
Cricket: The game's world governing body has been labelled as "little more than a talking shop" for its failure to take decisive action over last year's match-fixing crisis by the new edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. The 138th edition of cricket's yellow bible, published yesterday, takes the International Cricket Council (ICC) to task for not calling a worldwide inquiry in the immediate aftermath of the revelations from former South African captain Hansie Cronje.
