Timo Werner of Chelsea is fouled by Tottenham’s Eric Dier.

Source: PA

Timo Werner made a fine run out to that side, and then simply allowed Eric Dier to thrash around on the grass in front of him. For what felt like an eternity Dier waggled his legs in the air, like an upturned beetle awaking from uneasy dreams to find itself transformed into a Tottenham centre-back. Eventually the opportunity to fall over arrived. Werner took it. Jorginho tucked the kick away. And by half-time Spurs had played an entirely inert 45 minutes. For Chelsea this must have felt like dancing with a corpse.

– A stinging assessment of Tottenham’s performance in their midweek defeat to Chelsea from The Guardian’s Barney Ronay.

* * *

The piercing screams told Cora Staunton far more than she wished to know. With 40 seconds left in the Great Western Sydney Giants pre-season clash with Adelaide Crows at the Norwood Oval earlier this month, Staunton’s team-mate and close friend Bríd Stack won a contested ball but was hit late by Crows midfielder Ebony Marinoff. The 11-time All-Ireland winner with Cork came away with a fractured C7 vertebra in her neck.

– Cora Staunton speaks to Micheal Clifford of the Daily Mail and Extra.ie in the wake of the serious injury sustained by compatriot and Greater Western Sydney Giants team-mate Bríd Stack.

* * *

He was alone, alone until the end. At about 8 pm, in one uninterrupted motion, he leaned to the side, reached out to the coffee table, lifted the gun, pressed it against his right temple and pulled the trigger. That was supposed to be the end of Drew Robinson’s story. Over the next 20 hours, he would come to realise it was the beginning of another.

– For ESPN, Jeff Passan tells the remarkable story of San Francisco Giants outfielder Drew Robinson.

* * * 

Klete Keller at the 2008 Olympics.

Source: SIPA USA/PA Images

The arrest eight days later of an American sporting hero turned American pariah triggered a sense of shock, but not necessarily surprise, within the swimming community. Keller is the product of what one person who knows the family terms a “strict, right-wing household.” And not a happy household at that. Most everyone in the tight-knit sport knows about Keller’s upbringing, and about the tortured path he took after retiring in 2008 – in part because he has talked so openly about it all. Says another source who has worked with many of the elite performers in the sport: “If there is one swimmer I could see being there, it’s him.” 

– Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde examines how Klete Keller went from Olympic hero to FBI target for his role in the US Capitol siege. 

* * * 

There was no sporting loss too severe that meeting Paul Rudd on a stag weekend in the Kings Head wouldn’t cure. At least, that’s what I thought. I know better now; there has been no greater sporting tragedy to befall this town, or any in this country, than Covid-19 — a phenomenon so indiscriminate in its paralysation of places and people, it has even humbled Galway, the city that never weeps.

– Colin Sheridan pens a beautiful lament to the pandemic’s impact on the sporting landscape in the Irish Examiner.

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