1. “There it is,” I said to him as we drove up. “Where?” he said, seeing only the houses, before he stopped, laughed and said, “oh” as Anfield appeared in front of him. We, too, visited the club shop after we’d bought a Mo Salah scarf from the stalls opposite The Kop.

At this point, it would be customary to say that the vast expansion of English football, the all devouring commercialisation and globalisation of the Premier League, has tarnished the game. As we walked around the shop, I should say it was depressing to see how everything can be monetized. This, I would continue, was inevitable in a game hijacked by oligarchs and petro-states, which has lost its connection with where it came from (an argument incidentally often advanced by those who were sceptical or dismissive of that connection in the first place).

I can believe those things, but at that moment all I saw was the joy of an eight-year-old boy who feels that finally he will be able to own a clay figure of Roberto Firmino and a Liverpool FC football with the players’ autographs on it.

Forty years on from his own first trip to Anfield, The Currency’s Dion Fanning brings his son to the home of Liverpool FC for the first time.

2. Ellis Genge: In our world, it is the heavier the better. It is just a social stigma that seems to be stopping that in the women’s game. It is f***** up and we don’t have to put up with that.  You have to make sacrifices. With my wrists – I can’t bend them. I ask myself would I swap it and I wouldn’t. You make those sacrifices and changes to your body and look at all the rewards you get. You win trophies and you get to do all this great stuff. But f*** I have never thought about that for women.

It hurts a lot less when I carry body fat and weight around. I went down to 108kg in lockdown and in our first scrum back, I felt like my neck was going to snap. I was in pieces. I put on five kilos and my neck was so strong and I felt so good.

Sarah Bern: We have a really good nutritionist from Bristol Bears and he is coming in to help with us in England. The girls are starting to realise that you have to eat quite a bit more food than what we are putting in. It is getting a lot better. But still a lot of us will be asking ‘does this look too tight, what do these shorts look like?’

England internationals Ellis Genge and Sarah Bern talk growing the game and body image in rugby, during a chat facilitated by Kate Rowan for The Telegraph. (€)

3. There are many of us who had wrongly assumed that snooker’s golden age had irredeemably passed: that it was bound to the scrap heap of glittering late-20th century cultural icons like Spitting Image and Grange Hill and Yes, Minister and Rubik’s Cube.

Ronnie O'Sullivan in action at the Crucible last week. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Even during its heyday, in the four-channel TV-land dominated by bad news and Blind Date, snooker was a gloriously eccentric proposition. Here was an 18th century Raj game that somehow made for cross-generational entertainment in the awakening era of colour TV, with its dandyish etiquette, its hushed atmosphere and a louche cast of characters whose lifestyles, the newspapers breathlessly assured us, made the various members of the Rolling Stones look like a cautious accountancy firm.

The magic of snooker, a sport (or game?) which remains blissfully indifferent to modern demands, as told by Keith Duggan in The Irish Times.

4. It is tempting to say Everton have been left behind by the Premier League era, losing out to clubs who found their feet (or a mega-rich benefactor) at a time when success and income started to become self-perpetuating for those at the top. But it is not as simple as that. 

Everton’s decline had actually set in earlier. Their fans will always wonder what might have happened had Howard Kendall’s great team of the mid-1980s been allowed to compete in the European Cup rather than miss out due to the ban imposed on English clubs after the Heysel Stadium disaster. Kendall was lured to Spain by Athletic Bilbao and decline — gradual decline — set in.

For The Athletic, Oliver Kay looks at the decline of Everton as the Blues find themselves in the depths of a very real relegation battle. (€)

5. If anyone thinks that Nickey Rackard relied only on power and strength, have a look at the footage of his old and grainy goal near the end of that final. The game is in the melting pot. Tom Ryan handpasses a ball from distance to Rackard who grabs it, sidesteps the Cork full-back John Lyons and blasts a rasper to the back of the net. Game over. Wexford have beaten a Munster team on the big day. It is their finest hour.

Every competition Wexford entered that season they won. National League, Leinster, All-Ireland, Walsh Cup, Oireachtas. Every question had been answered. Incidentally, 65 years after his retirement, Rackard remains the leading all-time championship goalscorer. Astounding. 

In The Irish Examiner, Liam Griffin takes a look at Wexford legend Nickey Rackard, on what would have been his 100th birthday.