Mary Hannigan

2 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Mary Hannigan

Normal time, extra-time, cramp, penalties, despondency, rapture: all we were missing was a wink and it might have felt like Durban all over again. As Brendan Cummins put it, “it’s the kind of game where you’d want to be in the full of your health”, him probably fretting about Marty Morrissey’s wellbeing at that stage. “My heart! My heart! My heart,” Marty had hollered, the Munster hurling final giving him palpitations.

3 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Mary Hannigan

A quiet night until the 52nd minute when he made a brilliant tip-of-the-fingers save from Krépin Diatta’s header. Could do nothing about Senegal’s equaliser. Brentford have themselves a bargain. Rating: 8This fella’s international career looked done and dusted not so long ago, but after a good season with Wolves, he’s continued his solid form for Ireland. Replaced by Jake O’Brien on 67 minutes.

3 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Mary Hannigan

Belgium stand between the Republic of Ireland and a place in the top division of the women’s Nations League after the sides were drawn against each other on Friday for October’s two-leg promotion/relegation playoff. The prize for the winners is a substantial one, as not only will they play in League A next time around, they will also have a less complex qualification path to the 2027 World Cup.

3 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Mary Hannigan

Cork, writes Joe Canning, have had just three weeks to figure out what went wrong at the Gaelic Grounds when they were close enough to being pulverised by Limerick. It’s like “they’re sitting a repeat exam,” he says of Saturday’s Munster final against the same opposition. This, Joe reckons, “could be more like the game we thought we were going to get” last time out. Galway will be sitting a repeat exam too in Sunday’s Leinster final, having been “destroyed” by Kilkenny seven weeks ago.

3 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Mary Hannigan

There was, of course, no end of disappointment in the Limerick camp when Cork ended their ‘drive for five’ last summer in the All-Ireland semi-finals, but manager John Kiely felt some relief too. Even when he went to Mass, there was no escaping the county’s fixation with it. “We’ll pray for the five-in-a-row and we’ll move on down to the more important matters of life and death,” people would say to him. “It’s definitely no harm that it’s finished with,” he tells Seán Moran.