Standing between Dublin and four in a row next month will be Tyrone. Mickey Harte's team joined the reigning champions in the All-Ireland football final following a one point win over Monaghan at Croke Park - with Niall Sludden's opportunist second half goal proving decisive. Columnist Kevin McStay believes that the better team won on both days over the weekend, and although there was a lower quality of football on display, he enjoyed Sunday's encounter more than Dublin's win over Galway: "Tyrone know that they will have to show more in the final but it will be a huge boost for their development as a team. Mickey Harte knows his way around these occasions and has never lost an All-Ireland final."
Premier League champions Manchester City began their title defence with a comfortable 2-0 away win over Arsenal. According to Ken Early it was the same old Arsenal under Unai Emery: "No manager ever seduced a group of players by being a nice guy. Now is surely the time for Emery to be radical, to show his squad that things are going to be different from now on. If any club was crying out for a fresh start and a new direction, it's Arsenal. If continuity was what the players wanted, there would have been no need for Wenger to leave." Liverpool justified their pre-season hype with a 4-0 win over (Declan Rice's) West Ham, and last season's top scorer Mo Salah didn't take long to get his first of the new campaign. While in Sunday's other fixture Burnley and Southampton drew.
Tiger Woods gave us one hell of a run at a 15th Major title and proved that he is right back at the top of the golfing world - but ultimately finished runner up to Brooks Koepka in last night's dramatic USPGA final round. Koepka saw out the deal in firing a closing round 66 for a total of 264, 16-under-par, that gave him a two shots winning margin over Woods. Shane Lowry, too, fought a brave effort and was on target for a top-five finish until back-to-back bogeys on the 16th and 17th ruined his card. Not helped at all by a rules official on the 16th.
Irish gymnastics history was made in Glasgow on Sunday as 19-year-old Rhys McClenaghan claimed a gold medal in the pommel horse event at the European Championships – a first ever European gymnastics medal for Ireland. Later in the evening, Ciara Mageean fell just short of winning another European 1,500m medal in Berlin. Britain's Laura Muir took the gold as Mageean was edged in a race for bronze with Laura Weightman, who got to the line first in 4:03.75, Mageean clocking in 4:04.63 in fourth, less than a second behind .
