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Jim McGuinness on why the kingdom may be about to reign supreme

Clare seemed to think too much about their opponents on Sunday, while Novak Djokovic is only thinking about winning

Kerry’s Sean O'Shea celebrates with Diarmuid O'Connor after the latter's goal against Tyrone in the All-Ireland SFC quarter-final. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho

Tue Jul 11 2023 - 10:02

The All-Ireland football semi-finals are coming up this weekend, and while four counties still have a shot at claiming Sam Maguire this year, Jim McGuinness can imagine Kerry winning the the trophy this year – and he’s even looking further ahead than that. What if Kerry don’t just win the All-Ireland – what if they win it easily? “Will we then be talking this autumn about a green and gold wave? Will we be looking at a Kerry team capable of handling any system and who have no clear challenger to their reign? Could we be looking at another decade of dominance by a single county?” Stop it Jim, you’re scaring us.

Denis Walsh felt that trepidation proved to be extremely damaging to Clare’s chances of defeating Kilkenny last Sunday in the All-Ireland semi-final in Croke Park. This team that feared no one in Munster, suddenly got the heebie-jeebies when they reached Croke Park. “The brazen fearlessness that fuelled all of those performances was put in the fridge until the second half. Before the plane even left the runway they were in the brace position.”

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But back to the hurling. Just in case you were naive enough to think that maybe Nickie Quaid indulged in some gamesmanship to halt the game between Limerick and Galway when things were going against his side, allow John Kiely to put you straight. See, the Limerick manager explained it was the referee that stopped the game as Quaid was feeling poorly. And how dare you suggest otherwise. “Why did the referee do that? Because his umpire expressed concern about Nickie, because Nickie wasn’t feeling well. That’s what happened. Fact. Obviously these people that are commenting online don’t know the facts so I think the facts are very important.”

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Well, that’s you told, you awful cynic. Thankfully Quaid managed to regain himself and play out the rest of the game without incident.

Johnny Watterson is into his second week at Wimbledon and on Monday he saw an exciting combination of the old and the new. Firstly there was the veteran Novak Djokovic doing Novak Djokovic things, and comfortably winning his way into the quarter-finals while extending his winning run at Wimbledon to 32 games.

And then at the other end of the spectrum there was Mirra Andreeva, the 16-year-old from Russia, who behaved exactly as teenagers have a right to when losing out to Madison Keys of the USA, and behaved a bit petulantly. When the racquet seemed to accidentally pop out of her hand, he got penalised for throwing it. Cue some arguing with umpire, more throwing of stuff and a refusal to shake hands with the umpire after the game. “She didn’t do a right decision for me. Yes, that’s why I didn’t want to shake hands to her,” she said. Fair enough.

In golf, the Walker Cup is coming to Lahinch, and Rory McIlroy will be paying a visit to Scotland to fine-tune his links play ahead of his next assault on that long-awaited major at the British Open.

Brian O’Connor believes that Tower of London might just following in Paddington’s footsteps – a sentence that sounds quite surreal unless you know that Tower of London and Paddington are horses. “Tower Of London has a shot at moving from handicap success to Group One glory in France, just like stablemate Paddington, after being included in a handful of Aidan O’Brien entries left in Friday’s €600,000 Grand Prix de Paris at Longchamp.”

ON TV

SOCCER: Yes, Jack Grealish is probably still walking around with the big-earred trophy somewhere, but the race for the next Champions League title starts here. Shamrock Rovers take on Breidablik at home in the first qualifying round (RTÉ 2, 7.45pm).