Ireland kick off tour against Maori All Backs; Politicians scoring political points on GAA brawl

“No matter what else Nick McCarthy does from this day forward he will be true to himself, and in some small way sport facilitated that journey.” Gordon D’Arcy this morning takes a deep dive into the importance of team culture, looking at his own tough experiences trying to fit in with Leinster and Ireland camps early on in his career. D’Arcy readily admits that he was someone who did not do well in ‘alpha male’ environments and he struggled trying to be someone who he was not. It wasn’t until Joe Schmidt came into the fold that the importance of team culture and being true to yourself came into the discussion. Those chats came off the pitch, but matters back on it take centre stage this morning as Ireland get their New Zealand tour officially underway against the New Zealand Maori. Kick-off is at 8.05am and you can catch the action on our live blog. Bundee Aki captains Ireland in the stadium of his old Super Rugby team, the Chiefs. In the run up to the game, Andy Farrell has been speaking about the presence of his old boss Schmidt now in the All Blacks camp.

“Tiernan Kelly did a stupid, terrible thing. He was lucky the consequences weren’t worse for Damien Comer. Nobody is arguing anything else. But the reality of the situation now is that there’s a river of shit flowing down the mountain on to this lad from people who know absolutely nothing about him.” Darragh O Sé has some strong thoughts about politicians weighing in on the GAA brawl. He struggles with the idea of - what he sees as - them political point scoring out of an event that should be left to the investigative powers of the GAA, believing that the added negativity is unfair on the likes of Tiernan Kelly despite the terrible nature of his supposed gouging actions. Speaking of, the CCCC will meet on Thursday to deal with the violent scenes that took place between Galway and Armagh players. Seán Moran looks at any potential disciplinary action, arguing that the various parts of that process are not in sync.

“Like someone just yelled out I was shit in the crowd today. Is that normal? No.” Tuesday saw an eventful as ever outing from Nick Kyrgios as his Wimbledon campaign this year got off to another interesting start. Shouting at the crowd and all, the brash Australian made it through his first round tie against Paul Jubb in five sets. Rafael Nadal is also through in a match against Francisco Cerundolo where at times the Spaniard put on an exhibition of power hitting, and at others he piled up the unforced errors.

Tuesday night saw one of the highest quality displays of T20 batting held on Irish shores as Andrew Balbirnie, Paul Stirling, Harry Tector and George Dockrell were all in the runs for Ireland as they came agonisingly short of a famous maiden win over India, falling by four runs in Malahide. After an expensive outing, young Umran Malik in just his second international game held his nerve with a good final over for the visitors. In American football, the college destination of high schooler Archie Manning has been one of the biggest recent sporting stories Stateside. Dave Hannigan looks at his illustrious sporting bloodline that has him so prominent in the public eye.