Weds Lunch Sport, with Joe Mallon Motors, Sallins Rd., Naas

Champions Cup to Revert to original 4 Pools format; Bellingham goes to Madrid; Nations League semi final tonight; AI to be used at Euro Athletics Championships

The Heineken Champions Cup will be revamped for next season with four pools of six teams introduced, tournament organisers have announced.

Three seasons ago, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the tournament structure changed to two expanded pools of 12 teams.

It came in for criticism as 16 of 24 teams progressed out of the pool stages, with EPCR chairman Dominic McKay earlier this year admitting that the structure was under review.

Now the EPCR has returned to something more similar to the previous structure, with four pools of six rather than the six pools of four.

At the conclusion of the pool stage, the four highest-ranked clubs from each pool will qualify for the round of 16, and the clubs ranked number five in each of the pools will qualify for the knockout stage of the Challenge Cup.

The Challenge Cup will feature three pools of six.

The top eight teams in the United Rugby Championship, Top 14 and Premiership will compete in the Champions Cup, with the 2024 finals to be staged at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium next May.

The Republic of Ireland squad flies to Athens today ahead of Friday's European Championship qualifier with Greece.

Goalkeeper Maynooth’s Mark Travers didn't train yesterday due to illness, but the rest of the panel are fit.


Real Madrid have completed the signing of Jude Bellingham on a six-year deal from Borussia Dortmund, both clubs have announced.

The 19-year-old moved to Germany from boyhood club Birmingham in 2020 but has long dreamt of playing for the LaLiga giants.

Dortmund confirmed in a statement last week that Real have agreed to pay an initial 103m euros (#88.5m) to land Bellingham.

Now Real have confirmed the deal is complete.

Brendan Rodgers is likely to be Celtic manager for a second time.

The 50 year old Antrim native would replace Ange Postecoglou at Parkhead.

Rodgers guided the Glasgow club to consecutive domestic trebles in 2017 and 2018.


The Netherlands host Croatia in the first of the Nations League semi finals tonight in Rotterdam is at 7.45.

The winners will play Spain or Italy in the final.

=================
The US Open starts in Los Angeles tomorrow.

Rory McIlroy cancelled his press conference, presumably to avoid being questioned on the recent PGA/LIV alliance

=====================
Sarah Healy remains on course to qualify for the World Atletics Championships after claiming her first win on the Continental Tour Gold series.

The Dubliner was just under a second outside her personal best in winning the women's 15-hundred metres in Turku.

=================

Some of the commentary on this month's European Athletics Team Championships will be generated by Artificial Intelligence, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) have announced.

The AI will use the cloned voice of British commentator and former athlete Hannah England to turn a 24-hour live blog into an audio stream.

The team athletics will take place from 20-25 June 20th to 25th in Chorzow in Poland as part of multi-sport European Games centred on the city of Krakow.