Ciarán Murphy: Trump in Doonbeg was a walk in the park compared to weeks ahead for the Republic of Ireland

Will there ever be a weirder three weeks in Irish sport than the 21 days between Shane Lowry winning the Irish Open in front of Donald Trump last Sunday and the Republic of Ireland team playing Israel in the Nations League for the second time in a week on October 4th?

I began working full-time in Newstalk in July 2004, just before the start of the Athens Olympics. It was a miserable two weeks for Ireland, enlivened only by Cian O’Connor winning a gold medal, only to have it stripped from him after his horse tested positive for human antidepressants. Those were the weighty moral issues we had to wrestle with in the mid-2000s.