English bookends championships filled with Irish achievement; Early on United’s capitulation to public opinion

A stellar European Championships for Irish athletics came to an end on Sunday night, the week bookended by Mark English securing a second bronze medal of his career in the 800m. It was a tactically astute run from the Donegal man, covering the moves made by his rivals well while avoiding being boxed in towards the latter stages. On the same night, both Sarah Lavin and Efrem Gidey ran new personal bests in the 100m hurdles and 10,000m respectively. All of this came after Ciara Mageean’s scintillating run to silver in the 1500m on Friday night. Ian O’Riordan was our man in Munich and he takes a look back at the Irish achievements from the championship.

“Of all the failings and errors that have characterised post-Ferguson United, none has been more ruinous than their habit of slavishly following and reacting to public opinion.” Ken Early’s column looks at Manchester United’s destructive concern for what their fans want instead of actually thinking through decisions, ahead of tonight’s clash with Liverpool. From making Alexis Sanchez the league’s highest player to putting too many of their eggs in the fading Cristiano Ronaldo basket, too many critical strategy decisions have been made with little thought put into them. Early goes on to file a more comprehensive list of such bad decisions.

Shane Lowry has just missed out on a place in next week’s PGA Tour Championship by the barest of margins. Needing to move into the top 30 of the playoff standings, the Offaly man’s final round of 68 at the BMW Championship moved him up the leaderboard but just not enough as he ended up 31st. Rory McIlroy fired three consecutive birdies to end his Sunday’s work and secure a comfortable seventh place in the playoff standings.

“By a quirk of fate Michael Collins’s birth and centenary were both marked by his native county of Cork achieving that most unusual of feats, the All-Ireland football and hurling double – two of four occasions on which it happened in GAA history.” This week marks the centenary of the death of Michael Collins. Given the occasion, Seán Moran takes a look at the link between Collins and the GAA: “After his return from London in early 1916, the GAA and Croke Park feature prominently in Collins’s life during the revolutionary period. The association frequently ran challenge matches as benefits for political prisoners and their families, a cause which Collins hugely supported.”