‘It was strangely nerve-racking watching it back' – Dubliner Oscar Despard on University Challenge triumph
The 22-year-old from Portobello captained his team to a nail-biting 175-170 win in a match that went right down to the wire, ending with a final-minute comeback and a winning buzz from teammate Brendan Bethlehem.
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Irish Daily Mirror
2 hours ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
Why Premier League drought does not concern Ireland legend
Just five Irish players started the opening round of Premier League fixtures last weekend. That's the sort of info which, once upon a time, would have driven Enid Blyton to write a new children's book: five go on an impossible mission. Yet Kevin Kilbane, ambassador for Online Casino, doesn't see it that way. Read more: Troy Parrott, Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappe… where Dubliner features among top scorers in 2025 Having soldiered away in an Ireland shirt for 14 years and 110 caps, Kilbane knows a thing or two about adjusting to international football from England's second tier. Initially he found it hard playing Championship football with West Brom and then lining out against technically better and tactically different teams. But today's Championship - where the bulk of Irish players now ply their trade - is a completely different League in terms of style compared to then. Kilbane said: 'While it is hard to see so few Irish players get their chance in the Premier League, every Irish fan has accepted we are not going to be like the glory days anymore, in that we are not going to have 15 to 20 starters per week. And I can't see the number of Irish starters changing any time soon. 'But thankfully we still have a lot of quality. And that is where we have to build from - the five players who did get their start for Premier League clubs last weekend. 'Add in Evan Ferguson, Adam Idah and Troy Parrott to that mix and you have the nucleus of a good team who are all performing at a decent level. 'And while we are always going to look towards the Premier League as being the No1 place to be, to have Troy doing what he is doing in the Netherlands, cannot be overlooked. "We hope Evan can produce the goods with Roma. Adam Idah is doing great stuff with Celtic. Adam Idah (Image:) 'Plus, I wouldn't be too down on the Championship because that league makes real players. We cannot undervalue what it means to be a regular in that League and a serious Championship player.' Once we did underestimate it, though, with the former Ireland Under 21 manager Don Givens describing the league as 'dour, tactically predictable and alien to what is required at international football'. But that was a long time ago, back in 2002. Now Kilbane believes the influx of non British and Irish players and coaches has had a transformative effect and thereby has made it a bridgeable leap to go from being a club player in the Championship to an international performer. Kilbane said: 'When I started out in my career in the fourth tier, every single manager was British. League One would have been the same back then. The Championship then was also British focused. A foreign coach was rare. 'But that landscape has changed. The coaches are bringing something entirely different to the players, a new way of thinking, a new way of playing. 'So in terms of how a team sets up tactically, I don't see too much difference between the Championship and international football. Technically yes, international players are better. The quality is a lot higher but it is not night and day like it may once have been.' And overlooking all this is an Icelandic coach, Heimir Hallgrimsson, who has begun to win over his critics. Kilbane said: 'I like Hallgrimsson and how he has been approaching games. 'But let's be honest, if we get beaten by Hungary, we are done. 'We have to win that opening game to give ourselves a chance of being at the World Cup next summer. Our last two campaigns have been done before they started. That is why it comes back to the utmost importance of this first game. 'I am hopeful.' Kevin Kilbane was speaking on behalf of Online Casino. See for further details
The 42
3 hours ago
- The 42
Robbie Keane: 'Football can always come back and kick you where it's not good'
ROBBIE KEANE FACES an uphill battle if he is to lead Ferencváros back to the Champions League group/league phase. The Hungarian champions fell to a 3-1 home defeat to Qarabağ in the play-off round first leg last night. Ireland international Callum O'Dowda played the full game for Ferencváros. Keane's side led 1-0 in Budapest after Barnabás Varga's 29th-minute opener, but second half goals from Marko Janković, Kevin Medina and Musa Qurbanlı put Qarabağ — Shelbourne's conquerors — in control ahead of next Wednesday's return leg. Advertisement 'What can give us hope is that they already think they've won,' Keane told his post-match press conference. 'Football can always come back and kick you where it's not good.' The former Ireland international reflected on the game as a whole, rueing 'small margins' at Groupama Aréna. 'First half, we were okay. We got the goal, we looked comfortable, but then a big injury to Bence [Ötvös] disrupted the group. Still, saying that, the first goal came from a throw in the corner, they came out and score and the second came from a set piece. 'It's not like they played the ball through us, so that's disappointing. But the second half, after losing Bence, I wanted more control of the football. 'We had our chances also. Football has a small margin for error. It's small margins, you have to take the opportunities. They took theirs, we didn't.' Keane led Ferencváros to their seventh successive Hungarian league title in May, having taken over from Pascal Jansen in January with the team in second. The Dubliner previously guided Maccabi Tel Aviv to the 2023–24 Israeli Premier League title before stepping down as manager. Keane was also briefly in charge of Indian side ATK in 2018, and had spells on the coaching staffs of Ireland, Middlesbrough and Leeds.
Irish Daily Mirror
14 hours ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
Irishman's massive swimming challenge in World Record bid and fundraising effort
He has lost count of the number of times he has been stung by jellyfish. But Daragh Morgan won't be stopped in his bid to enter the Guinness Book of World Records by becoming the first person to swim around the entire island of Ireland. The Dubliner, who now lives in Galway, began his tidal-assisted stage swim on May 31 and is now over the halfway mark, averaging close to 20km per day. When we spoke on Monday, he had completed 868km of an approximately 1,600km long fundraising swim, which began from Blackrock Diving Tower in his adopted hometown. 'We passed the halfway point, which was Dublin. That was a great milestone for us as a team,' he told Fitter Happier. You can check on his progress via his Swim Éire socials, his website and a live tracker. Morgan, an endurance swimmer, tends to be in the water for six hours, then rests for six, a schedule that helps him take advantage of the tides. Even so, the 26-year-old is battling more than just the painful whip of a lion's mane's tentacle; challenging weather and shifting currents also conspire to try to knock him off course. 'We always talked about Ireland in quarters. What we realised was the first quarter was probably going to be the most challenging,' he said. 'Starting off is hard, whatever you are doing. That's the stage when you haven't really put the miles in. 'But on top of that, the first quarter of the country is very tough, not just to swim, but to navigate a boat around the likes of Slyne Head in Galway and different places like Donegal Bay, that was the most challenging part.' Daragh Morgan swimming along the Irish coast Even more challenging than the jellyfish stings? 'We had a few tough night swims,' he said. 'One of the night swims, we were going around a place called Macehead, and that was quite challenging because it was one of the first swims, and the weather was tricky as well. 'You feel jellyfish on your face at night. You can't see them. Usually it's bad enough during the day because you can see them a lot and you can try to dodge them. 'But at night you have to release whatever tiny level of control you had and you just have to keep swimming. 'The stretch from Skerries to Howth and then Dublin Bay was the worst out of the whole lot. 'Now, there are loads (of jellyfish) up the north, but they were quite a bit deeper. 'I just found Dublin, from Skerries down to pretty much Dun Laoghaire was littered with lion's mains, and they are the worst because their tentacles go everywhere. It's like hair everywhere in the water. You are getting stung a lot. 'The worst thing about them is, it gets worse when you get out. You can't sleep and you are kind of twitching with the itchiness and pain of it. 'But I try to use that to be hyperfocused. I try to anchor myself in that, to be focused. It is what it is - you can't really go swimming and not get wet.' Daragh Morgan on the Naomh Cronan Morgan, who works in sales for Innocent drinks, first came up with the idea of circumnavigating Ireland six years ago - and thoughts of achieving it 'just would not leave me.' He usually swims between one and two miles off the coast. 'We've seen great wildlife, a lot of dolphins, porpoises, lots of different diversity on the west coast. We've seen dolphins there by Skerries as well,' he says. 'No basking sharks or bigger mammals. I haven't seen any of them so far, but I can imagine there have been a few underneath me. 'We've seen a lot of seals as well. Sometimes when you are swimming you are in a flow. People have said to me from the boat, this and that was following you, and I didn't realise, because I was just in the zone. 'I know they are checking me out, but I am just firing away.' He couldn't undertake such a challenge without a support crew. After each swim, he climbs on board the Naomh Cronan, a traditional Galway hooker built in Clondalkin and gifted to Badoiri an Cladaig (the Claddagh Boatmen), to recover, refuel and sleep. 'It's been great to carry a cultural flag as well around Ireland, which this boat is,' Morgan said. On board are captain Dara Bailey, pilots Cillin and Padraic Mac Donnacha and Peter Connolly, all from The Claddagh Boatmen Group. Padraic is also a marine scientist and in collaboration with ATU and university of Galway has undertaken to collect a water sample every 20 nautical miles and filter it. The filters will then be analysed for E-DNA (environmental DNA) in order to determine the species of animals (fish, marine mammals ect) which swim in the coastal waters of Ireland. This research could provide an important baseline for monitoring species migration due to climate change and the warming of the oceans. How much longer does Morgan think his swim will take? 'That's the big question,' he says. 'I can't tell you that and it's not like I don't want to tell you, it's just based on so many factors. I couldn't tell you where we'll be at the end of the week. 'It's very hard, because you are dealing with so many factors out of our control. Really, all we kind of know about is today and tomorrow.' # Daragh Morgan is aiming to raise money for the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) and Simon Community. Search for Swim Éire on gofundme to donate.
