Philly McMahon: The Paudie Clifford dilemma – why man-to-man marking is not the answer
Zonal defending is dead. RIP. Don't mourn its passing, it died a coward's death.
This seems to be the upshot of the All-Ireland final. Kerry won. Donegal lost. Victory is the absolute measure of these things.
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Irish Times
37 minutes ago
- Irish Times
Five things we learned from the Lions' series win over the Wallabies
On the whistle A penny for the thoughts of match officials, a community that takes an enforced vow of silence, foisted on them by world Rugby. This series reminded everyone that it is impossible to get uniformity when it comes to some of rugby's laws. Putting aside the large dose of subjectivity that infected the debate around 'Ruck-gate,' in the second Test, and the advocacy for penalty or no penalty, none of World Rugby, supporters, players, former players, media and pundits were able (or in some cases willing) to adjudicate clearly, and say definitely and publicly what the correct decision should have been in Jac Morgan's clear-out of Carlo Tizzano. The reason? They can't. Too often the breakdown's a lottery. The officiating in the third Test was very poor. Too many cheap shots allowed to go unpunished. Way too lax, especially in the conditions. Collectively weak from the officials. Who is Ireland's greatest ever Lion? Listen | 26:49 Player welfare Garry Ringrose's decision to speak up when he found himself unable to shake off concussive after effects struck the right sort of blow for the future wellbeing of a sport. It also served as a reminder that for all the protocols in place around brain injury and head trauma, unless the players are willing to be forthright in communicating how they feel in the wake of such incidents, there will remain a grey area surrounding the return to play protocols. It's not an exact science and should never be regarded as such, but that advocacy has to come from those who experience the symptoms. Slogans like 'when in doubt, sit them out' push the right policy, but the players have to play a part. Garry Ringrose during the Lions' game against the First Nations & Pasifika XV in Melbourne. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho It took courage for Ringrose to make his decision, the right one, and therefore miss out on fulfilling a childhood dream of playing in a Lions Test match, but his selfless act will hopefully encourage others to be similarly brave. Commander-in-chief Putting aside the relative strength or otherwise of rugby in Australia ahead of the three Tests, the series was hotly contested and Andy Farrell did a great job – despite watching his side lose the Third Test – and in the process reminded all of his standing as a coach. It has not always been an easy task on the basis that potshots were taken as to the number of Ireland/Leinster players in the squad, particularly when the injury-forced call-ups rolled in, but he consistently made informed decisions that had the desired and pivotal effect. Lions head coach Andy Farrell ahead of the Lions' final Test against the Wallabies in Sydney. Photograph: David Davies/PA Perhaps the most obvious one to focus on is in Farrell ignoring the flak about selecting Tadhg Beirne and Tom Curry in the backrow for the first Test. Not only did they produce performances of rare quality in that match, but the former won player of the series, while Curry could only have been a fingernail behind. A favourite to lead the Lions in four years to New Zealand all things being equal in the interim. Forwards win matches The old rugby adage that 'forwards win matches and backs decide by how much,' was given further credence by this series. In the first Test, the Lions' pack dominated the collisions and the gainline for nearly two-thirds of the match, thereby allowing their halfbacks to boss the game and give the three-quarter line the perfect possession and position to play off that dominance. It was only when Australia got a foothold in the game physically following replacements on both sides that they were able to close the gap. Lions forwards Tadhg Beirne, Ben Earl and Tom Curry after the third Test against the Wallabies. Photograph:It was the reverse in the second Test as the Wallabies, with Rob Valetini and Will Skelton to the fore, won the contact battle and therefore were able to play off that front foot ball to great effect. Again, it was the bench, this time for the Lions, that turned the game in their favour, but unlike the Wallabies the previous week, they managed to find the winning line in the nick of time with Hugo Keenan's late try. In the third Test the Wallabies' pack won the match. Home-side pride Winning the third Test represents a huge shot in the arm for rugby in Australia and momentum that Joe Schmidt 's side can hopefully take into the Rugby Championship despite the short-term compromising travel logistics. Wallabies head coach Joe Schmidt after Australia's win against the Lions in the final Test of the series. Photograph:The Wallabies were convincing winners in the final Test but it may inspire some frustration on their part that they let a winning position slip through their fingers in the second Test. How much of an edge being 2-0 up in the series took off the Lions' performance in Sydney will be a subject of debate but Australia deserve credit for the way in which they managed the conditions to not alone be physically dominant but also technically better in several facets of the game, notably the lineout, the breakdown and the kicking game. Schmidt has pulled together a squad that shows promise and ultimately one that Les Kiss will look to build on from November.
The 42
an hour ago
- The 42
Shelbourne beat Cork City to go top of the table
SHELBOURNE BEAT Cork City 2-0 at Turner's Cross today to go top of the Women's Premier Division on goal difference. Athlone Town, who began the day at the summit, were in Champions League action, and Shels knew a win was necessary to put pressure on their rivals. American striker MacKenzie Anthony broke the deadlock just after the half-hour mark, and Ireland international Aoibheann Clancy's late penalty made sure of the victory, which resulted in the Leesiders dropping to the bottom of the table. In a battle between third and fourth, Wexford beat Shamrock Rovers 2-1 as ex-Ireland international Stephanie Zambra suffered a first defeat in her second game as interim manager, having guided her side to an emphatic victory over Waterford on Tuesday. Ella Kelly's goal gave the visitors a half-time lead at Ferrycarrig Park, but the hosts produced a positive response after the break. Becky Cassin's spectacular effort drew her side level in the 66th minute before Aoife Kelly's close-range finish won it with 18 minutes of normal time remaining. Elsewhere, Bohemians overcame DLR Waves 5-2, with Katie McCann hitting a hat-trick, to make it six wins in a row in all competitions for the Gypsies. Advertisement Sarah Power had opened the scoring for the visitors at the UCD Bowl, while Savannah Kane made it 4-1. Amber Cosgrove previously equalised for DLR Waves early in the second half, and Amber Cullen scored a stoppage-time consolation goal for Laura Heffernan's side. Having begun the day at the bottom of the table, Sligo Rovers picked up just their second win of the season away to fellow strugglers Waterford and moved up to 11th as a result. The visitors were aided by a 29th-minute red card for Waterford's Stephanie Dumevi. Captain Emma Hansberry opened the scoring with a brilliant goal from 30 yards out eight minutes before the break. Alan Doherty sealed the win in the second half, getting on the end of a free kick to double her side's advantage in the 65th minute. In the late game, fifth-place Galway rescued a point against Peamount United. Eleanor Ryan-Doyle, who recently returned home after a four-year stint in England, headed the visitors in front at Eamonn Deacy Park. But Amanda Smith's deflected finish drew Galway level in the 67th minute, as the spoils were shared.
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
Hannah Tyrrell: ‘I just wanted to prove people wrong. I'm very competitive. I don't let anybody win'
This is the end. For real this time. A week short of her 35th birthday, Hannah Tyrrell heads for Croke Park this weekend like a kid who keeps finding a way to put off bedtime but now, finally, is ready to relent. As long as Dublin and Meath don't finish level and go to a replay, this will be her final game of intercounty football . She thought – she knew – that her final game was last year, when Galway beat them in extra-time in the All-Ireland quarter-final. In Parnell Park that afternoon, her family and friends gathered around her afterwards and everybody accepted that was that. Her second coming with Dublin had been a beautiful coda to a rugby career whose success had surprised her as much as anyone. Now it was time to go and live and be. 'I knew – well, I thought I knew – going into last year that it would be my last year,' Tyrrell says. 'And so when we lost to Galway in the quarter-final, it was obviously devastating and not where we wanted to end up. But, yeah, I was done. I definitely was ready to walk away and move on and do other things in my life.' So she did. She and her wife Sorcha have two-year-old Aoife at home and, as any parents of a toddler will attest, that pretty much dictates what 'doing other things in your life' means. Aoife was born just a few weeks before Dublin's All-Ireland victory in 2023 and is just getting to the stage now where she understands what it means when she sees Tyrrell grabbing her gear and heading for the door. As far as everyone was concerned, there was going to be a lot less of that. READ MORE But a trip to Australia around Christmas changed things. She went over to see family but while she was there, she met up with Sinead Goldrick, one of the dwindling number of AFLW players who has managed to keep up an intercounty career to go along with her Aussie Rules one. Goldrick was coming back for one last year and popped the question to Tyrrell. Why not do the same? Hannah Tyrrell with her daughter Aoife, then seven weeks old, after Dublin defeated Kerry in the 2023 All-Ireland ladies final. Photograph: Laszlo Geczo/Inpho Well Sinead, the why-nots were plentiful. Hannah Tyrrell had been playing top-level sport in one code or another since 2008. She was 18 years old when she played in her first FAI Cup final, losing to St Francis in the 2009 decider before winning it in 2011. She flitted between Shamrock Rovers and the Dublin Gaelic football team for a few years before taking up rugby on a whim and being fast-tracked to a full-time Ireland contract in 2014. For most of the past decade and a half, her time was never entirely her own. 'I have a young family at home and I wanted to be able to spend time with them and not be restricted by all the training and everything else,' Tyrrell says. 'Even just summer holidays – as a teacher, you're confined to certain days you can go away and stuff, and obviously that's in the middle of the football season. [ Meath v Dublin All-Ireland final: Throw-in time, team news, where to watch Opens in new window ] 'That stuff can be incredibly frustrating, if you're not involved in football, for the people around me. But no, coming back, obviously there were lots of conversations with team-mates, with the two lads Derek and Paul and obviously with my wife Sorcha about how we would make it work. 'There are obviously sacrifices people have to make in order to make training and a couple of accommodations here and there with management. But I suppose I felt things didn't go to plan last year and I wasn't entirely comfortable with how I played last year. It was hard to walk away on an ending like that. So we made things work to go again.' Hannah Tyrrell breaks away to score a try for Ireland in a Women's Six Nations game against Wales at Cardiff Arms Park in 2021. Ireland won 45-0. Photograph: Robbie Stephenson/Inpho Even then, it probably should have ended before now. Dublin were having a reasonably drama-free championship right up until the point at which they weren't. A fortnight ago in Tullamore, as the clock ticked down to 43 seconds left with Galway a point ahead, it looked for all the world like the curtain was definitely falling on Tyrrell's career this time around. [ Dublin putting 2021 hurt behind them to set the record straight against Meath Opens in new window ] But a free conceded by Galway for over-carrying got moved up to the 40m arc because of time-wasting. Had the Galway players just dropped the ball and let Dublin get on with it, it would just have been a matter of seeing out the 43 seconds with 15 players behind the ball. But it got moved up and Tyrell was able to kill the rest of the clock and send the equaliser over the black spot to bring the game to extra-time. 'It was tense, it was frantic and all the rest. But you want to be in a very calm head space when you're playing football and particularly when you're on the ball as a forward. So for us, we were kind of just thinking about the next play, trying to keep tipping over a couple of scores. 'Because I think, for both teams in the second-half there was a period of 15-20 minutes where nobody scored. Just because of the nature of it and the intensity, the tackling from defenders, etc. So for us, we were just trying to stay as calm and level headed as possible and keep our work rate up. We knew that if we played the way we know we can, the scores were there for us. We needed every last second to to get them.' So here she is. One last game. One last big stage. For all her achievements, Tyrrell never actually played in Croke Park until 2021. It was only a month after lining out for her last rugby game in the Six Nations and she slotted in with Dublin as they took on Cork in the league final. She has always loved it there and revelled in the space – her Player of the Match display against Kerry in 2023 was an adornment to the old place. Ireland's Tyrrell is tackled by Maria Magatti of Italy in a 2021 Women's Six Nations Championship match at Energia Park. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho Back in real life, Tyrrell teaches history in St Patrick's Cathedral Grammar School in the city. She leans on that sense of history every time she sets foot in the stadium, all the players that went before, all the drama that unfolded. She isn't the kind of high-profile player who brushes off what these things mean to the women coming behind her. Embraces it, in fact. 'That's why I'm such a passionate advocate for giving women's sport a chance and for trying to give it coverage and everything else. People wonder why it's not seen as being at the same level as men's sport and all the rest. And I'm like, 'We're still in our infancy.' 'Women's Gaelic Football has only existed since the mid-1970s. Even if you take rugby, men's professional rugby only came in in the mid-1990s – and no fault to the players themselves but when it came in, it wasn't exactly pretty rugby to watch. But give it time and rugby's such a huge sport in Ireland right now. 'Give it time, give it a bit of backing, give it some funding and support and you can see how well it flourishes. And I think we're starting to see that we've a long way to go in women's Gaelic football. But we're definitely moving in the right direction and we've made leaps and bounds. 'We talk about legacies and everything else. That's what our team's about. It's about families, our culture, who we are as people, how privileged and lucky we are to represent our city and this amazing, amazing county. And we want to leave a legacy that younger girls, my daughter included, can look up to and hopefully emulate when they're in our position.' Tyrrell in St Patrick's CYFC strip during the 2023 FAI Women's Amateur Shield final against Wilton United at Newhill Park in Co Tipperary. Photograph: Tom Beary/Sportsfile Tyrrell being Tyrrell, she's not going to be leaving team sport entirely behind her. There's club football with Na Fianna still on the horizon and she is looking forward to getting into playing flag American football, the non-contact version of the NFL she so loves. All the stuff that's in her, all the drive and go that made her such a multi-sport phenomenon, she can't just turn it off at the mains. [ Meath captain Aoibhín Cleary's full focus on All-Ireland glory before trip Down Under Opens in new window ] 'I'm fairly competitive,' she says. 'When I started playing rugby, I never planned to go on and play for Ireland. I just really enjoyed the sport and then I just wanted to be better each time. And that kind of drove things for me. Gaelic football is the same. When I started, I was a goalkeeper but wanted to play outfield and kind of was told, not outright, but like … you're not good enough, basically. 'And so that there for me was that competitive edge to show that I was. Same with the soccer, being the only girl against boys, I was seen as the weak link. And again, I just wanted to prove people wrong. I'm very competitive. I don't let anybody win, really. That's just been my whole life. 'With the flag football, I joined the South Dublin Panthers last October and played a little bit with them. So I'll go back and play that socially for a bit, it's really good crack. But I'm not the type of person that will be sitting on the couch. It's just not who I am. I have to stay active. I'll look forward to being just somebody, which is nice. Not being in elite sports.' That's Monday's business though. The astonishing, unique sporting career of Hannah Tyrrell has one more Sunday in it yet.
