Ugandan GAA team line out in Clare jerseys for match against local rivals
Nile Óg Cusacks GAA, based in Jjinja, Uganda, was founded in July 2024 by New Quay man man John Conroy and teaches Gaelic football and Irish dancing to children in the village.
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The Irish Sun
12 minutes ago
- The Irish Sun
Kevin Kilbane speaks for Katie Taylor fans with complaint about ‘terribly biased' Netflix coverage of Serrano trilogy
KEVIN KILBANE vented his frustration about Netflix's "terribly biased" coverage of Katie Taylor's trilogy fight against Amanda Serrano. Taylor, 39, put her undisputed super lightweight titles on the line against Serrano, 36, at a sold-out Madison Square Garden. 2 Katie Taylor fought Amanda Serrano for a third time at MSG Credit: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile 2 Kevin Kilbane complained about Netflix's coverage Credit: Sportsfile - Subscription It was the third bout between the two rivals, with KT having won both of their previous contests. Their first, also at MSG, saw the Bray woman retain her lightweight crown with a split decision victory in April 2022. The sequel, at AT&T Stadium last November, saw the 2012 Olympic gold medalist win via unanimous decision. It was a result that remains contested by Serrano, who lamented Taylor's perceived intentional use of her head which saw her deducted a point in the bout. Read More on Katie Taylor The controversy was alluded to on several occasions during Netflix's coverage, with video packages even featuring lead commentator Mauro Ranallo's claim that the Puerto Rican was "robbed". Former Republic of Ireland international footballer Kevin Kilbane took to Twitter to criticise this element of the build-up. He said: "Terribly biased narrative again around the pre fight build up on @netflix. Anti Katie Taylor as per the first 2 fight. Let's go Katie! #TaylorSerrano3" He followed this up with another post which read: "No respect for greatness! Let's go @KatieTaylor" Most read in Sport It was a sentiment shared by many fans of the Irish boxing legend. One said: "The commentary are a disgrace the stuff their saying about Katie" A second posted: "Disappointing but not surprising, I imagine the commentary will be bias again aswell" A third said: "Yes, they want Serrano to win so bad it's sad lol" A fourth said: "Taylor is going to need a KO to get a draw here. So rigged and their not hiding it" A fifth said: "Oh it's the worst. But like last fight Katie doesn't give a f***" Katie Taylor as she hit back against 's claim that she should have had her hand raised last time out. She said: 'I have my own opinion about the stuff that Amanda has been saying on our team, but the fact is I am 2-0 against her. "Opinions are opinions, but facts are facts and you can't get away from those facts. And yeah, I guess I'm just tired of the complaining and the whining from Amanda's team. "I'm going into this fight already beating Amanda and I plan to stay beating her. I plan to stay 3-0 come this Friday night. 'I feel like people haven't seen the best me yet and I can't wait to showcase that on Friday night. "I can definitely make the fight a lot easier for myself and I just can't wait to step in there now and actually perform. "I know that I can perform and produce the best performance of my career.'
Irish Examiner
2 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Andy Farrell's five key selection posers for first Lions Test
Van der Flier, Curry, Morgan or Pollock? The Lions have barely had a second for reflection lately. Is it Thursday in Canberra or Friday in Adelaide? Either way, there is another game just around the corner. With scant time for proper training, the management have been relying on players sticking their hands up on matchdays but no one, as yet, has nailed down the No 7 jersey. This matters because the Wallabies will be strong at the breakdown and possess an array of jackal threats. If Toulouse's Jack Willis were here the conversation might be different but there is probably one starting spot to be contested between Josh van der Flier, Jac Morgan, Tom Curry and Henry Pollock. Curry had the chance to stake an unanswerable claim against the Brumbies but, in common with many others, had a tricky evening. The other three are all involved against the Australia-New Zealand Invitational XV this weekend and there remains much to play for. The management clearly like the game-breaking ability that Pollock can offer and Morgan, despite not being the biggest of men, can be a real nuisance. Curry's work-rate will be hard to overlook unless Andy Farrell, in his quest for cohesion, simply reverts to his trusted Irish lieutenants and starts Van der Flier. Chessum or Beirne – or both? They appreciate a Big Red in Australia, whether it be kangaroos or a decent shiraz. And the flame-haired Ollie Chessum is already making an impact down under. He has been as consistently good as almost any of the Lions forwards, to the point where it will now be a major surprise if he does not feature in the Test 23. The question is what role he should fill. The back-row balance did not look entirely right against the Brumbies and there is only one tour game left in which to fiddle around with the blend. Tadhg Beirne has played a lot of rugby this season but is he still at his sharpest? Or could the Lions conceivably go for all-out mobility and start both Beirne and Chessum in the same starting XV for the first time on this tour? Beirne, interestingly, is back in the second row this weekend but picking him there for the first Test would mean omitting big Joe McCarthy. If Beirne has a colossal game this weekend, though, it will give the whole debate a vigorous stir. Aki, Tuipulotu or Farrell? Before the tour this was widely seen as Sione Tuipulotu's shirt to lose. But the Scotland captain has been injured and is still shaking off a touch of ring rust. Bundee Aki, on the other hand, offers a powerful simplicity at 12 that gives Finn Russell the option of using him as either a compelling decoy or a straight-up carrier. Teams may think they know what Aki is going to do but stopping him from five metres out remains easier said than done. In theory that simplifies the equation for Tuipulotu against a physical-looking combined Au-NZ Invitational XV: crank things up or accept a Test place may have to be delayed. But what about Owen Farrell? Who would the Lions want coming off the bench in a pressure-laden Test match if, heaven forbid, Russell or even Aki were to go down early on? If Farrell Jr goes well in Adelaide, his ability to operate at both 10 and 12 makes him a genuine option for the matchday 23. Ringrose or Jones? The selection at 12 has wider ramifications. If Aki starts, the temptation to pair him with his Ireland teammate Garry Ringrose clearly increases. Ringrose is a strong defender and may well be seen as the man to defuse the obvious threat of the Wallabies' emerging star Joseph Aukuso Sua'ali'i. The Leinster man is in form, too, having scored tries in Perth, Brisbane and Canberra already on this tour. That may mean Huw Jones will have to be patient unless he rips it up in Adelaide and shows he can offer another dimension to the Lions' attacking effectiveness in the wider channels. Again it also boils down to the collective blend: if the Lions back three is also going to be predominantly Irish it makes Ringrose the safer, more logical pick. Keenan or Hansen? The moment Blair Kinghorn whacked the pitch with his hand in frustration after being injured against the Brumbies it felt ominous for the Lions. Sure enough Ireland's versatile Jamie Osborne has been summoned as cover and Farrell will have to find another full-back for next week's first Test. The situation is complicated by the fact Hugo Keenan has played only once on tour prior to this weekend because of illness. He is also a different kind of player to Kinghorn and a less obvious bench option. So what does Farrell do? Stick with the devil he knows or roll the dice? One option could be to shift his favourite player Mack Hansen to full-back. That would permit him to start both Hansen and Tommy Freeman in Brisbane, with James Lowe's raking left boot also in the back-three mix. Marcus Smith might disagree but, right now, it would be a huge call to select the Harlequin as a starting Lions Test 15. Guardian
Irish Examiner
4 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Clodagh Finn: The Irish tennis ace you've probably never heard of
As the women's final gets underway at Wimbledon today, let's give a celebratory shout-out to the only Irish woman ever to take the title: Lena Rice from Tipperary. It's now fairly well-known that this woman with the powerful serve beat May Jacks in two sets to take the singles title in 1890 so, why then, is there so little about the record-breaking player who beat her earlier that year? A few weeks before, in May, Louisa Martin defeated Lena Rice in the final of the Irish Championships at Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club, a tournament on a par with Wimbledon at the time. On that occasion, Miss Martin, to use the deferential tone adopted in news reports, 'played up better' than Miss Rice to take the singles title. It was no one-off. Louisa Martin was Djokovic-esque in her achievement; like him, she won 24 Major titles — though not all singles — in a brilliant career that earned her international recognition. Here is a summary of those dizzying stats: Between 1886 and 1903, she won 15 Major singles titles, five doubles and four mixed doubles championships, and she was a three-times finalist at Wimbledon (1898, 1900 and 1901). Tennis historian and author of The Concise History of Tennis (2010) Karoly Mazak went so far as to rank her 'world number 1' for six of those playing years, but even in the pre-Open, pre-ranking days of the late 19th century her game was considered exceptional. HISTORY HUB If you are interested in this article then no doubt you will enjoy exploring the various history collections and content in our history hub. Check it out HERE and happy reading Writing at the time, English tennis correspondent A Wallis Myers said of her: 'She has been unfailingly to the fore at the premier meetings, always a doughty warrior, armed at all points to meet any kind of attack. There is no better-known member of the Fitzwilliam Club, and among the roll of ladies who have given their best to promote the true interests of the game in Ireland, hers must inevitably go down to posterity.' Stellar career Her singular career, however, did not go down to posterity or, at least, not until recently. That Myers appraisal from Lawn Tennis was quoted in a revelatory piece on RTÉ Brainstorm last week in which Aoife Ryan-Christensen recalled the heyday of Irish tennis and the Irish Open, once an important stop on the tennis calendar. There are other references, including a very impressive account of her stellar career by Mark Ryan on but it still feels as if we have not made enough of a woman who was exceptional in her field. As Ryan puts it: 'Given the successes she consistently achieved at the highest level during the period 1885-1903, in particular in singles events, Louisa Martin can arguably be considered Ireland's greatest ever female lawn tennis player.' If you trawl back through the archives, that little-known fact breaks through in several unexpected places. It's a wonderful surprise, for instance, to discover a sketch of her in a 1896 summer edition of The Gentlewoman, 'the weekly illustrated paper for women' founded in London just six years before. She is shown wearing a long skirt, a cinched blouse and a straw hat as she steps forward to take a shot. 'Louisa Martin can arguably be considered Ireland's greatest ever female lawn tennis player.' How women, often wearing brimmed hats and skirts that brushed the ground, played tennis at all is a wonder, but Louisa Martin must have faced extra challenges as one of the few women who had an overhead serve and a serve-and-volley game. Rise to fame Born Mary Louisa Martin to Edith Agatha Martin and the Reverend George Henry Martin on September 3, 1865, in Newton Gore, Leitrim, Louisa (as she was known) was a teenager when lawn tennis was enjoying something of a golden age in Ireland in the late 1880s. It's not entirely clear when she began to play — perhaps while visiting her grandparents in Cheltenham — but by 1884 she was good enough to make it to the finals of the Cheltenham Championships. She lost to Edith Davies in three sets, but she was already making waves. The Field Lawn Tennis Calendar said that while Davies carried off the title, 'she was very hardly pressed by Louisa Martin, who, if able to practice with good players, will be able to hold her own with the very best of the ladies'. It wasn't long before she did just that. Two years later, she returned to win the championship and repeated the feat in 1887 and 1888. By then, her name was enough to draw a crowd, or so the Belfast Newsletter suggested in its coverage of the Irish Championships in late May, 1887. It reported that the 'the audience was larger than on the previous day no doubt in anticipation of the match between Miss Louisa Martin and Miss Lottie Dod'. Despite showing 'exceptionally brilliant form' in that season's practice matches, Martin lost to Dod because of 'nervousness', a trait singled out more than once to explain her few losses. In the Irish Championships of 1892, though, Louisa Martin evened the score when she beat Lottie Dod, then considered unbeatable. The sports journal Pastime ran this account: 'Scarcely anyone expected Miss Martin to win, but win she did. She started with great dash and decision, the court — somewhat slow and heavy from thundershowers — appearing to suit her admirably, and proving just as unsuitable to her opponent's style of play. The consequence was that Miss Dod had no time to get into her stroke, and the set was quickly won by Miss Martin by 6-2." Her opponent won the second set and it looked like she might take the third too, but a thunderstorm stopped play; the short reprieve revived Louisa Martin who won the game, 'her play all round being of a very high order'. We get a tiny peephole into her private life, courtesy of the Evening Herald, in late May 1896, which recounted that Louisa's niece, Madge Stanuell, was visiting the tennis champion at her country home at Grange Bective, Co Meath, when she fell from a horse but happily escaped serious injury. Lena Rice from Tipperary is the only Irish woman ever to have won the title at Wimbledon. Madge Stanuell's aunt on the other side of the family was Florence Stanuell. She was also a gifted tennis player who teamed up with Louisa to win a number of doubles championships. Not only were the aunts good at tennis, but they were also talented hockey players. Louisa, known as 'Loo' to friends and family, was also something of a character, according to her great-nephew Peter Bamford. She farmed some of the land she inherited and, at times, blew the harvest money to bring Peter's mother Evelyn to London as her chaperone. 'This was all part of Aunt Loo's fun,' he writes, 'as she was about 55 and her 'chaperone' about 17. My mother had many tales of these excursions, which took place about 1920 and later. On one occasion Aunt Loo acted scared of the traffic in Oxford Street and made a 'holy show' of her chaperone, finally they took a taxi to cross the street.' There's another newspaper snapshot that speaks of the connections between sportswomen of the time. Buried deep in the social columns of April 1938 — three years before she died — is a line telling us that Louisa was a guest at the wedding of Tyrone golfing pioneer Rhona Adair's daughter. When Rhona Cuthell married William Aylmer Clarke that year, Louisa Martin was among the congregation wearing 'a saxe blue felt hat with a tailored suit of navy blue'. As one of the world's most famous tournaments draws to a close today, let us also pay tribute to this one-time finalist and greatly overlooked tennis great. Read More Jennifer Horgan: We need to find room in our hearts for the people of Sudan
