The Morning Sports Briefing

Racing: Cheltenham

It's been a good start to the Cheltenham festival for the Irish but they go into today's races with a point to prove - There is a glaring lack of an Irish-trained winner on the Ryanair Chase roll-of-honour and no one is more motivated to fill that gap than the big-race sponsor Michael O'Leary with his long-time antepost favourite Don Cossack.

After four wins from four this season an anticlimactic career is threatening to finally fulfil on the big stage today.

There isn’t an Irish blank on the Ladbrokes World Hurdle roll-of-honour, but rather just the one winner in 20 years .

"Abbyssial could be a big-priced option to change that" thinks Brian O'Connor, and we seen what he's capable of during his Grade One victory at Punchestown last season.

It's forty years since the late Dessie Hughes rode his first Cheltenham winner, Davy Lad in the 1975 Sun Alliance Hurdle, his daughter Sandra Hughes is now attempting to become just the second woman to train a World Hurdle winner.

She’ll be hoping that Lieutenant Colonel continues to justify her father’s instinct that returning to hurdles rather than continue a novice chase campaign.

Rugby: Six Nations

Gerry Thornley predicts that Joe Schmidt is unlikely to make several selection switches in the penultimate game of the championship against Wales this weekend, but rather restore Jamie Heaslip to an otherwise unchanged line-up.

He’s usually pretty spot on, but that team will be announced for certain later today.

Too small

“I never took rugby seriously in school. I was told I was too small which pretty much went on throughout my international career, which was the story of my life.” Ex-Wales and British and Irish Lions winger Shane Williams certainly proved that if you’re good enough you’re big enough, but he says he’s found “a massive change in size” within the game since he retired.

There’s not much room for a 5ft 7in 80 kg winger in this modern era he explains.

Soccer: Champions League

PSG last night knocked Chelsea out of the Champions League after an extra-time 2-2 draw at Stamford Bridge saw them through on the away goal rule.

The French club did so without talisman Zlatan Ibrahimovic who was quite controversially sent off early on for what looked nothing more than a mistimed challenge.

Meanwhile German champions Bayern Munich made amends for their 0-0 first leg draw with Shakhtar Donetsk by crushing the Ukrainian team 7-0. Both Bayern and PSG now progress to the quarter finals.

John O'Shea, Jon Walters and Aiden McGeady are the three who have been nominated for FAI player of the year.

Walters’s form at club level in particular, McGeady’s heroics in Tbilisi and John O’Shea’s in Gelsenkirchen leave each with a decent punt at collecting the award.

Martin O'Neill will name his squad for the vitally important European Championship qualifier against Poland on Thursday when Robbie Brady is likely to be the only one of his regulars to miss out through injury.

GAA: The Toughest

The Toughest Trade airs tonight at 10pm on TV3 - and should be worth the watch. Kilkenny hurler Jackie Tyrrell and former Armagh footballer Aaron Kernan swap codes with Major League Baseball standout Brian Schneider and former Tottenham midfielder Bentley respectively.

Apparently Bentley has a bit of a right-footed Ciaran McDonald about him.

What to watch out for

There’s a busy morning ahead with Martin O’Neill naming his Irish soccer squad for the upcoming Poland game, while rugby head coach Joe Schmidt is to name his starting fifteen for this weekend’s crunch Six Nations tie with Wales, that’s due a little later at lunch time.

In Ireland’s pool in the cricket World Cup South Africa and United Arab Emirates do battle today, not that the result will have any bearing on Ireland’s qualification aspirations at this stage.

It’s day three of the Cheltenham festival, the main event being the World Hurdle at 3.20pm. Can’t miss that.

Channel 4, 12.35pm-4.20pm

RTE 1, 1.20pm-4pm

RTE 2, 7pm-7.30pm

Everton are one of the English league’s last hopes in European competition this year as they go in search of consolation for their dismal domestic form with a win in the Europa League against Dynamo Kiev.

3e from 7.30pm