Irish success stretched from Cape Town to Kentucky over the weekend, with plenty to celebrate at home as well.
Our Sport for Business Champions of the Weekend covers Rugby, Football, Racing, Golf, Basketball and Gaelic Football, and is brought to you this week by our partners SSE Airtricity.
Béibhinn Parsons and Ireland Women’s Rugby
Ireland Women finished their first tour of South Africa with a 2-0 series victory, beating the hosts 38-17 in Cape Town on Saturday, and Béibhinn Parsons was at the heart of it with a hat-trick of tries.
Ireland had trailed 17-14 approaching the final quarter before producing a powerful finish, with Parsons crossing twice more and Aoife Dalton also scoring twice as Scott Bemand’s side pulled clear. It followed the previous weekend’s 40-27 victory and means Ireland leave South Africa having won both Tests on their first tour of the country.
For a women’s programme still building its profile and commercial value, finishing 2026 by making a little history was a pretty good way to sign off.
Aidan O’Brien and Ballydoyle
Another weekend, another piece of racing history for Aidan O’Brien.
Sun Goddess won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf at Keeneland on Friday night, giving O’Brien a record-breaking 22nd Breeders’ Cup victory and taking him clear of Bob Baffert as the most successful trainer in the history of the meeting.
He was far from finished. Haffner followed up in the Juvenile Turf, a race Ballydoyle has now remarkably won five years in succession, before Benvenuto Cellini swept late to take Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Turf and move O’Brien’s career total at the meeting to 24.
At one of world racing’s great international showcases, the strength of the Irish thoroughbred industry was again impossible to miss.
Liam Nolan
Galway golfer Liam Nolan took the biggest step yet in his professional career on Sunday, securing his DP World Tour card for 2027 with a superb closing round of 67 at the HotelPlanner Tour Grand Final in Mallorca.
The 26-year-old from Bearna, who turned professional only last year, made seven birdies in his final round to finish the tournament at 11 under par and secure ninth place in the season-long Road to Mallorca rankings, comfortably inside the 15 places that earned promotion to Europe’s leading professional circuit.
It completed a remarkable few weeks for Nolan, who was lying 43rd in the rankings before his maiden professional victory at the Abu Dhabi Challenge in October transformed his prospects. A fifth-place finish in China followed, setting up Sunday’s opportunity to turn a promising season into a career-changing one.
Con O’Callaghan and Cuala
The margins become increasingly fine when club football moves beyond county boundaries, and Cuala needed one of their biggest players to produce one of the weekend’s biggest moments.
With their Leinster Club Championship game against four-in-a-row Offaly champions Tullamore level approaching the end of normal time at Parnell Park, Con O’Callaghan stepped up to land a two-point score that secured a 0-16 to 1-11 victory and passage to the quarter-finals.
The Dublin champions’ reward is another week on the Leinster road. For O’Callaghan, it was an emphatic response only days after missing out on a Football All-Star.
Limerick Celtics
The early season hierarchy in Irish basketball has a new name at the top.
Limerick Celtics defeated Garvey’s Tralee Warriors 88-69 to move to 5-1 and take over at the summit of the Domino’s Men’s Super League, capitalising on defeats for both Limerick Eagles and Belfast Star. Philip Kearney led the scoring for Celtics with 21 points.
There was plenty happening elsewhere too, with UCC Demons taking Cork derby honours over defending champions Ballincollig and EJ Sligo All-Stars upsetting Belfast Star.
It all points to a Super League season with plenty of competitive depth and, commercially, exactly what a national competition needs.
UCD
The Students are one game away from a return to the Premier Division.
UCD came from behind to beat Bray Wanderers 3-1 at Tolka Park on Sunday in the SSE Airtricity Men’s First Division play-off final. Sam Norval, Ciarán Behan and Hugh Smith scored as Willie O’Connor’s side recovered after Dean O’Shea had given Bray the lead.
The prize is a meeting with Drogheda United at Tallaght Stadium next Saturday, with a place in the 2027 Premier Division on the line.
Promotion and relegation play-offs bring genuine jeopardy into the closing weeks of the domestic season, and next weekend should bring another sizeable occasion.
Shamrock Rovers
Friday night’s result may not have gone their way, but it was still Shamrock Rovers’ weekend.
Pico Lopes lifted the SSE Airtricity Men’s Premier Division trophy at Oriel Park following a 3-1 defeat to Dundalk, completing a season in which Stephen Bradley’s side regained their place at the summit of Irish football. It is the Hoops’ sixth league championship in seven seasons.
Sustaining success is often harder than achieving it for the first time, and that consistency has made Rovers the benchmark against which every other ambitious League of Ireland club now measures itself.
Leinster Rugby
Leinster’s form was clear heading into the international break.
A 50-5 victory over Connacht at Dexcom Stadium underlined once again the depth available to the province as they closed the opening block of the BKT United Rugby Championship in emphatic fashion.
The scale of Leinster’s playing resources has become a recurring theme in Irish professional rugby, but turning depth into performance remains the important part. Eight tries away from home represented a fairly convincing demonstration.
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From Parsons in Cape Town and Ballydoyle at Keeneland to Cuala at Parnell Park and a new name on the European Tour in golf, this weekend’s winners offered plenty of variety.
And with UCD now preparing for a winner-takes-all promotion clash, the AIB club GAA Championships gathering pace and the international rugby window about to open, November has wasted little time in offering up its next set of contenders.
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Image Credit: Michael Darragh Macauley on LinkedIn
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