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Sunday Sports Pages: England's rugby misery, Mourinho's meltdown and Galway player revolt

The biggest stories of the sports weekend feature across the back pages of the papers on Sunday, ...



Sunday Sports Pages: England&#...
Soccer

Sunday Sports Pages: England's rugby misery, Mourinho's meltdown and Galway player revolt

The biggest stories of the sports weekend feature across the back pages of the papers on Sunday, and the panel on Off The Ball to pour over the highlights. 

Having been dumped out of their own World Cup at the group stages, the pressure is now on Stuart Lancaster and his squad of players, who met their end in the group of death. 

That might have had something to do with Bernard Foley's master class in rugby last night, but there is of course an element of luck to every sporting achievement, and Declan Lynch argues that, with reference to the world of golf and the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship that's currently taking place in Scotland, some people who put in all the work might not get the breaks that others do. 

With Chelsea going through a sticky run of form, there's also increasing speculation about Jose Mourinho and his position after some amazing comments yesterday where he blamed the players, the referees and to a certain extent the people who sign his paychecks. 

For McWilliams, the interesting angle on the piece is to see the famous master of the mind game as an "individual seeming to lose the plot in public over the last couple of weeks". He highlights how he appears to be going through the stages of grief, from denial to anger, but that given that Abramovich does fire people, it might not be long before he loses patience with the Portuguese...again.

There was even more manager talk too as the attention turned to the Management and hurling revolt - Having reached the All-Ireland final this year, there was always likely to be some dissatisfaction, but there were strong rumours that the players had voiced their concerns about manager Anthony Cunningham and even held a vote of no confidence n him. 

Shortly before the county board ratified him for another year in the job, 30 players gathered to vote and a massive 27 said they didn't want him back, which would seem to make his position untenable. For McWilliams however, some questions need to be asked of the players: if they fail to win what they're desperately seeking next year, then the blame rest squarely on them. 

"If you look at Mayo and Galway, by any standards these are successful teams, top four, top two quality. [The vote] It's not a reflection of the lack of success of the team, it's something deeper. The team believe they're that little bit away from it, and they believe the management will make a difference".

Of course, Declan Lynch got his obligatory mention of Stuart Downing in, which was also brought up by a texter. Some people just have that one player that they take a dislike to...

You can listen to the full paper review below, apologies in advance for the slight issue with the audio quality:  

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