Soccer: Champions League
Manchester United go into tonight’s Champions League play-off second leg at Club Brugge with a 3-1 advantage. Yet the first leg against last season’s Belgian runners-up was the only time United have scored more than one goal in their four games this season.
Talking ahead of the tie and manager Louis van Gaal says he will use Marouane Fellaini as a striker this season and the Manchester United manager believes the erstwhile midfielder can be dangerous as the main forward or in the number 10 role.
United will look to do a lot better than Celtic did last night - the Scottish champions surrendered their 3-2 aggregate lead and were again dumped out of the competition at the qualifying stages after a 2-0 defeat in Sweden.
A lack of desire, fitness, and an inability to organise and defend set-pieces all cost Ronny Deila’s team dearly.
GAA: Championship
GAA Correspondent Sean Moran is addressing the issue of referees in his column this morning, he says that before calling the Sunday Game up on their coverage of referee's performances the GAAshould take a look at their own stance of late regarding officiating and what affect that's been having;
“It’s one thing for pundits to lead the charge but another for the GAA to hang its match officials out to dry, as happened on an extraordinary evening last week in Croke Park. The case of Tiernan McCann attracted most attention and we’ll get to that but his expected acquittal was one of three – out of a total of four; a success rate for the defence last seen when Perry Mason was on TV.”
Darragh Ó Sé meanwhile is looking ahead to Sunday's football semi-final, and he feels the midfield battle will be crucial, and ultimately if Stephen Cluxton can help Dublin on their way in that sector they should edge a Mayo side which contains a very strong middle eight.
“We expect both teams to set up more or less in an old-fashioned six-two-six formation, leaving it a straight man-on-man battle in midfield. Mayo have come on leaps and bounds in that area of the pitch, whereas Dublin aren’t as strong there as they are in other places. In a straight-up battle, Mayo could definitely have the upper hand there.”
Elsewhere in the hurling and Brian Cody has "no concerns" over Eoin Larkin's participation in the All-Ireland hurling final on Sunday week. Larkin sustained a hand injury at training over the weekend, but the Kilkenny manager is more than confident he'll be fit to play.
Rugby: World Cup
Ireland defence coach Les Kiss says the set-up remain very much open-minded over their World Cup squad selections;
“We’ll get a lot of vision from the provincial games, during that Saturday, then we’ll watch that (Ireland-Wales)game and get the vision afterwards. And we won’t get much sleep, put it that way, we’ll trawl through it.”
Andrew Trimble has resumed training after recovering from his worrisome foot injury in the opening warm-up win away to Wales. But the odds on either Cian Healy and Marty Moore being involved this weekend appear remote.
Cycling
Nicolas Roche went tantalisingly close to a Vuelta a España stage win at the end of day four of the race on Tuesday, bridging across to 2008 Olympic champion Samuel Sanchez (BMC Racing Team) inside the final two kilometres and then striking out for home on the uphill push to the line.
Roche finished fourth, his strong result adding to the third-place finish he racked up on Sunday.
What to watch out for:
World Athletics championships continues today in Beijing, the women's 200m is on at 12.30 Irish time with Kelly Proper in action in the third heat.
Already this morning Ciara Everard finished in seventh in the heats for the women’s 800m, and Ben Reynolds finished in the same position on the heats for the men’s 110 metres hurdles.
BBC 2, 11am-3.15pm, 7pm-8pm
Eurosport, 11.30am-2.30pm, 6pm-8pm
La Vuelta Stage 5: To Alcala de Guadaira
TG4, 3pm-5.05pm
Manchester United's Champions League qualifier kicks off in Belgium at 7.45.
RTE 2 from 7.30pm
