This is a busy weekend, probably the busiest of the year, for The Irish Times team of sports journalists. Across the world, from the rugby fortress of Eden Park in Auckland, where Ireland played New Zealand yesterday morning, to the hulking MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where Spain and Argentina meet in this evening’s World Cup final, they are bearing witness to sport at its grandest scale. And today, of course, they will be in Ireland’s own sporting cathedral, Croke Park, for what many regard as the high point of the sporting summer, the All-Ireland hurling final. Add our shot-by-shot coverage of The Open at Royal Birkdale and the only question facing readers is where to look first.
The great sportswriter Hugh McIlvanney liked to joke that his trade was no proper job for a grown person, then spent more than six decades proving that it could rise to something approaching literature, written against the clock. Sports journalists work under extraordinary pressure of time to turn the unpredictable and sometimes chaotic events they have just witnessed into narratives of triumph and failure, hope and despair. The late kick-offs in the World Cup have meant that our reporters have often had to file within five minutes of the final whistle.
Remarkably, sports reporters are often also the finest prose stylists a news publisher can offer its readers. Some, like our Washington Correspondent Keith Duggan, go on to paint on broader canvases. Duggan has returned to sportswriting for this summer’s World Cup. Alongside columnist Ken Early, who we sent to North America for the tournament, they provide some of the most insightful and incisive coverage you will read anywhere of the build-up to this evening’s final. The match is not so much a “clash of styles” as the confrontation of two opposite ways of seeing the world, Early writes. “On one side: structure, precision, foresight, the rational ordering of space and time, smooth classical harmony. On the other: an inexplicable frenzy of tears, rage, ecstasy, barbecue, violence and genius.”
In his scene-setter, Duggan reflects on the abiding influence of Johan Cruyff on Spanish football, and on the relationship between Spain and Lionel Messi, “the genius curated by Spanish football”.
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This has been a tournament in which Fifa and its president Gianni Infantino did real damage to the credibility of their own competition, with suspensions deferred for reasons that had more to do with business and politics than sport, and in which Donald Trump, who will present the trophy in New Jersey tonight, has never been far from the story. Yet despite the price-gouging and the political meddling, the finals have retained the magic that makes football the world’s most popular sport.
Be sure to listen to America 2026, our World Cup podcast, presented by Paul Howard and featuring rolling cameos from Malachy Clerkin, Gavin Cooney, Kevin Kilbane and Ken Early. It’s a great listen, my favourite moment so far being Paul’s extended riff on the idea that the panenka is the semi-colon of football.
Closer to home, and ahead of today’s All-Ireland hurling final between Limerick and Galway, Denis Walsh profiles the remarkable Rabbitte dynasty. Jason Rabbitte will lead the forward line for Galway at Croke Park, following in the footsteps of his father Joe, an All Star full-forward of the 1990s, and his sisters Olwen and Sabina, who won an All-Ireland club camogie title with Athenry in January under their father’s management. Take a look at our All-Ireland final player-by-player guides, with Joe Canning on Galway and Nicky English appraising Limerick’s starters.
Our GAA Correspondent, Seán Moran, has covered 32 All-Ireland hurling finals, and in this fine piece he reflects on how the game has changed over his three decades reporting on it for The Irish Times.
This year also marks the centenary of the first radio broadcast of a hurling match, which was the first live broadcast of any field sport anywhere in Europe. Malachy Clerkin takes the anniversary as his starting point for a look at the changing face of sports media and the rise of the viral touchline clip. Those changes are visible in our own coverage too, which includes rolling live updates from all of the weekend’s key events, keeping you informed in real time wherever you happen to be. And later this evening Mary Hannigan will pull all the madness together in her own inimitable style as she reviews the broadcast coverage of a remarkable sporting weekend.
However you follow it, and whoever you are cheering for, enjoy every minute. Thank you, as ever, for subscribing.
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