Anthony Daly, Ger Cunningham and Michael Moynihan review the hurling weekend.

Over the coming weekends, luxury buses with complimentary wifi and mobile phone chargers will roll into county grounds all over Ireland.

Cork senior hurling manager John Meyler is looking forward to his side’s Munster championship opener in Pairc Ui Chaoimh — and hoping the post-match conversation won’t be about the playing surface.

They can’t escape now. Not even him.

Cork hurling great Diarmuid O’Sullivan believes his father Jerry has earned the right to run for the GAA Presidency after decades of rising up through the ranks.

It’s been a rough few weeks and months for Cork GAA.

When Limerick trailed Cork by six points with almost as many minutes of normal time to go in the All-Ireland semi-final, John Kiely would have been forgiven if he started to think like most Limerick supporters undoubtedly and understandably were at the time.

Clare were poxed to get a draw with Galway in the 1999 All-Ireland quarter-final. 

With new Cork senior football manager Ronan McCarthy being introduced to the media last Monday, attention on Leeside now turns to the replacement for outgoing hurling boss Kieran Kingston.

Bernard Dunne, the Irish Athletic Boxing Association’s high-performance director, is unperturbed about a supposed talent drain from Irish boxing. Instead, he insists a fresh team are already on course for great things, writes Brendan O’Brien.

It’s almost time for Jim Gavin to go into hibernation. From the day after the All-Ireland final to the start of the 2018 League, his public utterings will be minimal. Dealing with media, he once claimed, was the most difficult part of his position. From the bizarre to the brilliant, John Fogarty picks 10 memorable Gavinisms

Yesterday was tough, in more ways than one. I wasn’t in Thurles because I watched the game from the RTÉ studios in Montrose. It felt weird but, in another way, it was easier. 

They’re not half-pregnant now. For years there, that’s essentially how the Cork senior hurlers were going about the place. 

Bernard Dunne admitted he would need to fully immerse himself in his new role as High Performance Director at the IABA in order to gain a grasp of the changes required within the Irish amateur boxing realm.

Hopes of reclaiming Ireland’s prominence in the boxing ring at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo are being undermined by a high performance system roundly criticised by the ‘Rio Review’, according to heavyweight Darren O’Neill.

Irish Examiner writers Michael Moynihan and John Fogarty review the Allianz League weekend.

You have to give it to Cork for the way they responded after successive defeats to Dublin and Kilkenny, writes Anthony Daly.

It’s been three months since Cork lost to Wexford in the senior hurling championship — for the first time in 60 years.

Here’s a briefing on some of the stories and issues highlighted on irishexaminer.com today.

Cork hurling manager Kieran Kingston has secured the services of high-performance expert Gary Keegan for the Rebel hurlers, sources have confirmed.

Dublin 1-15 Mayo 1-14: In the battle of pragmatism and poetry, there was only going to be one winner. And Dublin it was.

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Our boxers, used to gruelling training camps in places like Russia, will finally be able to entertain the world’s best in their own backyard, writes Brendan O’Brien

Zaur Antia will guide Ireland’s boxers through to the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro later this year after confirmation from Sport Ireland chief executive John Treacy that the bid to find a permanent successor to Billy Walsh will not kick into gear until after the Games.

Zaur Antia revealed he rebuffed a number of coaching offers from rival countries before taking up his position as Irish boxing’s interim head coach.

Even now, after he’s gone and the Oireachtas hearing and the forest of newsprint his name and departure triggered, we don’t know what we’ve lost in Billy Walsh.

So they’re supposed to give up now. Just like any sensible group of Irish sportspeople should. They failed so they’re failures and would be better of failing to even try again, the nation’s sages in their self-appointed wisdom chortling Cleese that haven’t you forgotten, it’s the hope, not the despair, that kills you, old boy.

 

Billy Walsh was tightlipped about his future with Irish boxing yesterday, referring simply to a “plan for Rio” when asked if he would steer the Irish boxers to next year’s Olympics. The Wexford man has been strongly linked to the US women’s team but at yesterdays BGE Leadership Conference he focused on the development of the Irish boxing team.

To me, Derek McGrath has been manager of the year to date.

And just like that, Waterford are again everyone’s second favourite team.

Winning a world championship was a dream for Andy Lee, all the more so after two major career-threatening defeats and then the passing of his legendary mentor Emanuel ‘Manny’ Steward. 

Gary Keegan may have been talking about Irish Olympic sport in these pages a few days ago but what he said could apply to all of Irish sport.

A former boxing coach out in the Institute of Sport may be among the most invisible players in Irish sport, but he’s one of its most influential too, writes Kieran Shannon.

The name probably means nothing. If some radio sports show were to have a panel discussion about top coaching and top coaches in this country, it’s doubtful Liam Moggan’s name would crop up. His profile is hardly prominent.

This morning, the chairman of the national hurling review forum will be out coaching Portroe’s Under 16 Camogie team, encouraging each and every player — his daughter included. "In this country, we knock too much," says Tipperary’s All-Ireland-winning coach Liam Sheedy.

Nine months on from her golden summer at the Olympics in London, and boxer Katie Taylor’s star shines ever brighter in the eyes of the adoring Irish public.

The Irish Sports Council (ISC) yesterday revealed its Olympic Games debrief and while there was some praise, there were plenty of negatives too.