For Andy Farrell, on Monday it was a case of ‘which do you want first, the good news or the bad?’. We’ll get the bad out of the way - the foot injury Mack Hansen picked up playing for Connacht last Friday has ruled him out Ireland’s game against the All Blacks in Chicago on Saturday week. The good? As Johnny Watterson tells us, captain Caelan Doris is back in training with Leinster following May’s shoulder surgery and will travel to Chicago, as will Bundee Aki and Robbie Henshaw despite carrying knocks of their own.
The very bad news for Mike Adamson is that Owen Doyle was watching his performance in that Connacht game. Owen already had his doubts about the Scottish referee, but now? “It must be clear as day to everyone that Adamson’s race is run,” he writes, having been particularly unimpressed with how he responded to an alleged “testicle grabbing” incident. Adamson might experience similar discomfort while reading Owen’s column.
In football, Carla Ward, head coach of the Republic of Ireland’s women’s team, admitted that she hasn’t found everything to her liking since she took on the job in January and is in “constant conversations” with the FAI over improving “areas that I think we need to improve”. “Am I happy? Yes. Am I happy with everything? No. Things can always be better.”
In Gaelic games, Gordon Manning looks back at the career of Monaghan’s Kieran Duffy who has announced his retirement from intercounty football, only goalkeeper Rory Beggan now remains from the team that won the Ulster title back in 2013.
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In his Different Strokes column, Philip Reid looks ahead to Pádraig Harrington’s quest to triumph for a third successive year at the Simmons Bank tournament, this week’s event the second of three in the Champions Tour’s playoffs.
And in racing, Brian O’Connor has news of a rare reverse for Dylan Browne McMonagle, the jockey replaced by Australian Mark Zahra on Joseph O’Brien’s Melbourne Cup favourite Al Riffa for “the race that famously stops a nation” on the first Tuesday of next month.
TV Watch: The Champions League is back today, Barcelona v Olympiakos your 5.45 offering (Virgin Media Two and TNT Sports 1) and at 8pm you have the pick of Arsenal v Atletico Madrid (Premier Sports 1), Villarreal v Manchester City (Virgin Media Two and TNT Sports 1) and Newcastle v Benfica (TNT Sports 2).
