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Mary Hannigan: What a difference a year makes as Dublin return to top of the heap

Ken Early on scrappy Chelsea v Liverpool clash; Eamonn Coghlan reflects on career high and lows; Shane Lowry’s season of struggle

Player of the match Hannah Tyrrell celebrates with her seven-week-old daughter Aoife after Dublin's win over Kerry at Croke Park. Photograph: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Mary Hannigan's face
Mary Hannigan
Mon Aug 14 2023 - 11:24

When they were beaten in last year’s All Ireland quarter-finals by Donegal, Dublin’s Championship-winning days looked well and truly done and dusted. Manager Mick Bohan considered walking away from the job, and more than a few players had a think about retiring their boots.

Now? “It has been some turnaround. Dublin are back on top of the women’s game and on the basis of the first-half performance they turned in to break the back of Kerry’s challenge, condemning the Kingdom to back-to-back final defeats, they could be here for some time.”

Funny old game.

Player of the match Hannah Tyrrell’s deadly accuracy skewered Kerry in a first half that saw her score eight of Dublin’s 11 points, the corner forward proving unplayable. Her county’s triumph saw her “add yet another chapter to one of Irish sport’s most remarkable stories”.

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Chelsea and Liverpool could have done with similar accuracy when they met at Stamford Bridge on Sunday in their opening game of the Premier League season.

The contest ended in a “scuffling, scrappy 1-1 draw”, Ken Early concluding that neither “look likely to compete this year with Manchester City, Arsenal or even Newcastle”.

If you’re already feeling old, look away now. It’s 40 years since Eamonn Coghlan reached the pinnacle of his career when he won World Championship 5,000m gold in Helsinki.

Johnny Watterson reflects on his career, during which “he introduced chutzpah to Ireland”, Coghlan ruefully looking back on the two low points of an otherwise glistening track record: those fourth-place finishes at the Olympics. “While I might go down in the annals of sport as a really great runner,” he says, “the pits is coming fourth twice and it lives with you for the rest of your life.

Denis Walsh, meanwhile, writes about Shane Lowry’s struggles this season, the Offaly man left needing a captain’s pick if he is to be involved in next month’s Ryder Cup. “He can’t afford this season’s form to leak into another year,” says Denis. “Every golfer is looking for solutions. The game never stops asking, the numbers never stop spinning. It’s brutal.”

Telly watch: Manchester United get their season up and running tonight – they’ll hope – with a home game against Wolves (Sky Sports Premier League, kick-off 8.0).