Today’s the day, after what felt like an interminable build-up, the World Cup finally gets under way. It’ll be a long one, five and a half weeks in all, but it might not feel as lengthy as Fifa president Gianni Infantino’s press conference in Mexico City on Wednesday. Spare a thought for Ken Early, he had to sit through it all, Infantino rolling out “platitudes, gratitudes, filibustering”, with a smattering of self-praise.

Need it be said, he dismissed complaints about the ticket-pricing for the tournament, but in his travels around Mexico City, Ken didn’t meet too many locals who could afford to buy any. “If you’re not rich, then this “premium” event is simply not for you,” he writes, Infantino having turned this World Cup in to “an international symbol of exploitation and extraction”.

We can but trust that next year’s women’s World Cup in Brazil will be a less exploitative affair, one Karen Duggan is hopeful Ireland can reach after “a very, very positive” group campaign when they put it up to the big guns of France and the Netherlands. “I feel like we’re building something pretty special at the moment,” she says.

In Gaelic games, Ciarán Murphy is savouring the arrival of jeopardy in the football championship, with four counties facing “oblivion” should they lose this weekend. Armagh aren’t at the do-or-die stage just yet, but they wouldn’t say no to a win over Louth in Inniskeen on Sunday. Gordon Manning talks to captain Aidan Forker ahead of the game.

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And Stephen Barry hears from Eddie Gibbons in the build-up to Dublin’s hurling quarter-final against Clare, the goalkeeper insisting that the Dubs hold no fear of Munster opposition.

In rugby, John O’Sullivan reflects on the loss to Irish rugby at the end of the season of the “box office” James Lowe who will be heading for Japan after “Leinster made him an offer he could refuse”. John also has news on the 30-man Irish squad named for the upcoming Junior World Championships in Georgia.

Meanwhile, the athletics world has been paying tribute to former Olympian Ciarán Ó Lionáird who died earlier this week at the age of just thirty-eight. “With his wild streak and determination,” said Sonia O’Sullivan, he was “a shining light”.

And Ian O’Riordan talks to Ava Crean, the 20-year-old from Limerick who, last year, became the youngest Irish athlete to earn the national marathon title. She’s struggling with a hip injury, though, and will be unable to defend that title in October.

Katie Taylor, we now know, will follow in the footsteps of none other than Muhammad Ali when she fights in Croke Park in September. That Ali event was beset by problems, though, not least of the monetary kind – Dave Hannigan suggests six ways the Taylor camp can avoid repeating them.

TV Watch: RTÉ2 and UTV are your hosts for day one of the World Cup (from 6.15pm), starting with the opening ceremony at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, followed by Mexico and South Africa kicking it all off at 8pm. And if you’ve no end of stamina, you can stay up for the 3am game between South Korea and the Czech Republic in Guadalajara (RTÉ2 & UTV), the Czechs, of course, being the lousers who denied us a place at the party.

Source: The Irish Times