LIMERICK HAVE CALLED up four players to their squad for the 2021 season while All-Ireland winning defender Paddy O’Loughlin has dropped out of the setup ‘for personal reasons for a while.’ John Kiely’s team commence their campaign next Saturday in the Gaelic Grounds against Tipperary after a terrific 2020 season that yielded All-Ireland, Munster and league triumphs. They are currently operating with a 38-player squad, youngsters Colin Coughlan (Ballybrown) and Cathal O’Neill (Crecora-Manister) both joining for the first time. The pair are Leaving Cert students who won Munster minor medals in 2019. O’Neill is a highly-rated attacker who scored 0-9 in that provincial final win over Clare while Coughlan is…

IT’S 22 MONTHS since Kerry mounted the second-half fightback that took down Tyrone by three points in an All-Ireland semi-final in Croke Park. Source: James Crombie/INPHO It’s 16 months since Tyrone held off Kerry by a point to win a league encounter in Edendork. A pair of tight contests. A success for each side. The background as they approached yesterday’s meeting in Killarney. How then to explain the 16-point hammering that Kerry handed out in the latest clash? How do you account for the six goals that Kerry posted? How much value can be placed on it, with the summer examinations in mind? Kerry knew that winning this league semi-final…

CORA STAUNTON HAS been included in the 2021 AFLW Team of the year after another impressive campaign with the Greater Western Sydney [GWS] Giants. The four-time All-Ireland winner is named among the forwards who made the shortlist, averaging 10.3 disposals, and kicking 10 goals for her club this year. Staunton, 39, who first joined the Giants in 2017, has consistently been a standout performer since her move Down Under. She capped off her debut season by picking up the Giants’ Goal of the Year award. She then suffered a career-threatening triple-leg-break injury in 2019 but managed to make a full recovery the following season and has continued to make a…

Dublin 6-15 Waterford 2-12 HANNAH TYRRELL MARKED her return to inter-county football in style this afternoon as the Irish rugby international hit 1-5, as reigning All-Ireland champions Dublin convincingly defeated Waterford in Parnell Park. In a game that was dubbed a dress rehearsal for the championship, Dublin welcomed back Olwen Carey, Siobhan Killeen, and fresh from their endeavours in Australia, Lauren Magee and Niamh McEvoy. Waterford did get off to a quicker start and dominated early possession, Maria Delahunty hit one from play and converted a free. Early Dublin efforts skimmed wide of the post but they opened their account for 2021 with a Sinead Aherne free after Niamh Hetherton…

IN THE 50th minute of Sunday afternoon’s game, Páidí Fitzpatrick was summoned to the sideline at Semple Stadium. The Clare defender gestured with his fist as he ran off, saluting David McInerney who was coming on as a replacement. The message was clear. He had put in a huge shift to help establish a winning platform for his team as they were nine points clear. Now the focus shifted to supporting the rest of the team as they attempted to finish the job. Ultimately Clare were successful by four points. It was a victory to savour for their team to kick-start the 2021 ambitions but for Fitzpatrick it held a…

MORE IRISH PLAYERS have earned new Australian Football League Women’s [AFLW] contracts as the focus switches to next season. Click Here: Germany National Team soccer tracksuit Mayo and Cavan stars Sarah Rowe and Aishling Sheridan have committed their immediate future to Collingwood, putting pen to paper in recent days. Yesterday, Rowe was one of six players to have a new deal announced, signing on until 2023. The 25-year-old recently completed her third AFLW campaign, playing seven goals across an injury-hampered season, while kicking one goal. Having undergone shoulder surgery as the curtain came down on the 2021 season, Rowe stayed on in Australia to rehabilitate, missing the Green and Red’s…

REIGNING CORK SENIOR hurling kingpins Blackrock will take on last year’s semi-finalists Erins Own after this evening’s draw for the 2021 club championships in the county. On the day that adult club players received the green light to resume training in pods of 15 from Monday 10 May and can play games from Monday 7 June, the championship draws for the year ahead took place in Cork. In the hurling Blackrock, who ended an 18-year wait last October for senior hurling glory, will meet Erins Own along with city rivals St Finbarr’s and last year’s senior A winners Charleville in their group. Last year’s beaten finalists Glen Rovers will take…

The Supreme Court effectively held on Friday that state lawmakers can neutralize a constitutional right — so long as the state law attacking that right is enforced solely through private lawsuits. Not long after the Court opened up this surprising door in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced that he would see if the justices are really serious about creating a loophole that can be used to cancel constitutional rights. The Jackson case involved SB 8, Texas’s (apparently successful) effort to ban all abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy. SB 8 flouts the Supreme Court’s decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which forbids…

The excitement that greeted the 2006 release of Casino Royale, the first James Bond film to feature Daniel Craig as the legendary MI:6 field agent bearing the 007 designation, was palpable, even from those who had reservations about the film. It was a tighter, more dangerous Bond flick than the goofier Pierce Brosnan incarnations that immediately preceded it, and featured a hero who seemed both stonier and, at times, more human, less caricature of a dashing, devil-may-care spy. Craig didn’t look like the Bond that Ian Fleming described in his novels, but he acted like him and seemed poised to pull the flagging franchise into a new century. “Let the…

Wonder Woman 1984 swings for the fences in its 150 minutes of runtime. The movie, the second in DC’s latest franchise, is both a return of Gal Gadot’s Diana Prince and a wistful look at how lonely her life is. Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor is back too, despite his fate at the end of the first film; his comeback plunges the movie into a romantic reunion, unrequited love territory. At the same time, Pedro Pascal’s dastardly oil tycoon Maxwell Lord is descending into insatiable madness and succumbing to his thirst for power, while also dragging the US, entrenched in the Cold War, into all-out nuclear warfare. What we end up…