26/12 The Sports Pages

The Sunday Independent reflects on the problems faced by the Irish horse racing fraternity, thanks to the miserable weather conditions over the last month.

It's been a catastrophic winter season, with only five race meetings out of 19 going ahead since late November.

All scheduled meetings today (in Leopardstown, Limerick and Down Royal, as well as tomorrow's big meeting at Leopardstown) have been called off or postponed, costing the industry millions.

This comes on the back of declines caused by the recession and subsequent cutbacks in funding.

"Jockeys, trainers, betting turnover, caterers and all the casual staff associated with a race day are all feeling the effect," said Barbara White, marketing services manager at Horse Racing Ireland.

"Added together the losses would certainly run into millions. Typically in the month of December, racing attracts over 100,000 racegoers across 25 fixtures. This includes the Leopardstown and Limerick Christmas Festivals."

The Sunday Times reports that Alex Ferguson is demanding that his Manchester United players need to make fewer mistakes and show more guts as they head into the second half of the season.

“If someone had the balls to do it [they could]. If somebody at the top of the league went on a run of about 10 games in a row, winning, they’d win the league,” Ferguson says.

“We’ve done it in the past. We hope that we’ve cut out the stupid mistakes we were making early in the season. A lot of people said we weren’t in top form but we’ve had some good performances, just not in a consistent nature.”

The veteran boss says that he's more concerned with United's away performance than their performance at home. Away from home they've drawn six games out of seven.

The News of the World, meanwhile, go with the story that Liverpool are lining up Marseille's manager Deschamps to take over from Roy Hodgson at Anfield next summer.