Monaghan GAA icon Eugene ‘Nudie’ Hughes has passed away at the age of 67.
In a distinguished career, Hughes won three Ulster SFC titles and a National Football League title, while he was selected as an All-Star three times.
Widely considered Monaghan’s greatest footballer, Hughes was diagnosed with cancer in 2018.
He became the first Monaghan player to win an All Star in 1979 and repeated the feat in 1985 and 1989 when he received further personal accolades.
Hughes was one of only a small number of players to have been recognised in defence and attack, his first All Star coming as a corner-back with the others coming as a corner-forward.
Monaghan won the Ulster title in each of the years he received an All-Star.
Hughes was also part of the team that won the National Football League crown in 1985.
He picked up a Railway Cup medal in 1984 as part of Ulster’s winning side and also won two Ulster football titles with Castleblayney.
In 2024, Hughes was honoured by the Gaelic Players Association with a Lifetime Achievement award.
In an interview with BBC Sport NI’s ‘The GAA Social’ in February of this year, Hughes chose the Farney county’s Ulster Championship final triumph over Donegal in 1979 as his greatest day as a player.
Monaghan beat Donegal 1-15 to 0-11 at Clones on that occasion to end a 41-year wait for provincial glory.
Armand Duplantis, Julien Alfred and Matthew Hudson-Smith are among the stars competing at the Eugene Diamond League
The 2025 Eugene Diamond League meeting boasts one of the best fields this year with 17 individual champions from the Paris Olympics and 14 world record holders in action.
Five events feature all three medallists from the Paris Olympics, including the women’s 100m, which sees St Lucia’s Olympic champion Julien Alfred take on American duo Sha’Carri Richardson and Melissa Jefferson-Wooden.
Among the world record holders in Oregon are Sweden’s Armand Duplantis, who set a new high of 6.28m in the men’s pole vault in Stockholm last month, and Kenya’s three-time Olympic 1500m champion Faith Kipyegon.
You can watch all the Diamond League, also known as Prefontaine Classic, action unfold on BBC iPlayer, the BBC Sport website and the BBC Sport app from 21:00-23:00 BST.
Which British stars are competing?
Image source, Getty Images
Image caption,
Matthew Hudson-Smith won individual and relay medals at the Paris Olympics
In the men’s 100m, Britain’s 60m world indoor champion Jeremiah Azu and British record holder Zharnel Hughes go up against Olympic silver medallist Kishane Thompson of Jamaica, who with 9.75 seconds has the fastest time in the world this year, and American Trayvon Bromell.
Great Britain’s Matthew Hudson-Smith, who won silver in France last summer, and Charlie Dobson take on Olympic champion Quincy Hall and Olympic bronze medallist Muzala Samukonga in the men’s 400m.
Britain’s Olympic bronze medallist Georgia Hunter-Bell faces the challenge of Kenyan great Faith Kipyegon and Australian star Jessica Hull in the women’s 1500m.
GB’s world indoor champion Amber Anning is up against two-time Olympic 400m hurdles champion Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in the women’s flat 400m.
Other British athletes in action include Dina Asher-Smith, Neil Gourley and Jake Wightman,but Olympic 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson, whose return from a hamstring injury was delayed by a setback in April, and Josh Kerr are not competing.
Media caption,
Hunter-Bell wins Diamond League women’s 800m
What time are the key events in Eugene?
21:12 BST – men’s 100m featuring Jeremiah Azu and Zharnel Hughes
21:43 BST – men’s 400m featuring Matt Hudson-Smith and Charlie Dobson
21:51 BST – women’s 400m featuring Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Amber Anning
22:34 BST – women’s 800m featuring Mary Moraa and Athing Mu-Nikolayev
22:44 BST – women’s 100m featuring Julien Alfred, Sha’Carri Richardson, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and Dina Asher-Smith
22:50 BST – Bowerman Mile featuring Cole Hocker, Neil Gourley and Jake Wightman
What’s coming up this Diamond League season?
After stops in Eugene and Monaco, the series visits the UK for the sold-out London Diamond League on 19 July.
Injury permitting, Hodgkinson is expected to compete at the event where last summer she improved her British record to one minute 54.61 seconds.
London is also set to host the latest chapter in the 1500m rivalry between world champion Josh Kerr and Norwegian rival Jakob Ingebrigtsen.
Olympic and world 100m champion Noah Lyles, world 400m hurdles champion Femke Bol and British pole vaulter Molly Caudery are also on the entry lists, as the world’s top athletes build towards their shot at World Championship glory in Japan in September.
What is on the line in the Diamond League?
Athletes compete for points in 32 disciplines in a bid to qualify for the Diamond League Finals in Zurich in August.
That takes place just over a fortnight before the start of the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.
All Diamond League events will be shown on the BBC, which has agreed a deal to broadcast the competition for the next five years.
The Diamond League has increased its prize money to the highest level in its history, with a total prize pot of $9.24m (£6.95m) on offer across the series.
That includes $500,000 (£375,000) at each of the 14 series meetings, and $2.2m (£1.7m) at the Diamond League final.
How does the Diamond League work?
Athletes will compete for points at the 14 regular series meetings which started in April and run through to August.
Points are awarded on a scale from eight for first place to one for eighth place.
After the 14th meeting in Brussels, the top six ranked athletes in the field events, the top eight in track events from 100m up to 800m, and the top 10 in the distances from 1500m upwards qualify for the final.
The two-day finals are a winner-takes-all competition to be crowned Diamond League champion in each event.
Media caption,
‘He’s got it!’ – Duplants sets new pole vault world record
The infected have learned to stalk and sprint. The Cordyceps fungus is now airborne. And Joel (Pedro Pascal) isn’t immortal. The first five episodes of “The Last of Us” offered up several new threats and at least one major death. Deep into its second season, HBO’s series adaptation of the popular video game remains true to its namesake by sending its protagonist Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and her partner Dina (Isabela Merced) on a revenge mission from their fortified compound in Wyoming to the wilds of Seattle. Their aim is to find Joel’s killer, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever). But the Pacific Northwest presents challenges beyond cauliflower-headed flesh eaters and deadly mean girls. The brutal conflict between the Washington Liberation Front and the primitive religious cult the Seraphites makes Ellie’s mission all the more dangerous and complex — and the show’s imagery more gruesome.
Episode 6 brought Joel back from the dead in a series of flashbacks that gave insight into his unique parenting skills, revealed the event that triggered the rift between Joel and Ellie and uncovers what happened to therapist Gail’s (Catherine O’Hara’s) husband, Eugene (Joe Pantoliano). While on patrol, Eugene was bitten by the infected. Ellie made Joel promise he would not kill Eugene until he had the chance to say goodbye to his wife. But when Ellie leaves for a moment to retrieve their horses, Joel breaks the promise.
Like Episode 3 of Season 1, Sunday’s installment of the series was the rare episode that deviated from the game’s narrative to tell a deeper story about the characters. Beginning at Ellie’s 15th birthday and moving through subsequent ones, the episode chronicled the shifting dynamic in the main characters’ father-daughter relationship, from a tight bond between orphan and her adopted protector to near estrangement.
Lorraine Ali, Tracy Brown and Mary McNamara gathered to discuss the latest episode of the spore-filled thriller.
The source of tension between Gail (Catherine O’Hara) and Joel (Pedro Pascal) is revealed in Episode 6.
(Liane Hentscher / HBO)
Ali: “The Last of Us” features flesh-eating zombie-like things and death-worshipping cults, but I love that the true terror at the heart of Season 2 is the prospect of parenting a teen. The theme at the core of Episode 6 was largely centered on the fraught father-daughter dynamic between Joel and Ellie and the dangers of passing down generational trauma. We even get some backstory on Joel’s rough childhood, though I wish there had been more on that front.
What we do get a lot more of is Ellie’s hostility toward Joel, and it’s exhausting in ways that the showrunners probably never intended. Naturally there is plenty of ire in Ellie as she hurtles toward adulthood in a hopeless hellscape with an assassin/guardian who’s repeatedly lied to her. But now that she’s the lead character of the series, I need more from Ellie than just one or two gears of rage and scorn, especially given the complexity of their relationship.
Joel killed to save her and doomed humanity in the process! A bond forged in such tragedy should inspire a truckload of emotions, even in a defiant teen who’s still clumsy at expressing her feelings. But that depth or nuance just wasn’t there for me, even when the series cued us up for such moments. The flashbacks to Ellie’s birthday celebrations with Joel felt like explainers of how the two grew apart as opposed to emotional snapshots that captured the roots of their estrangement. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the surprising depth and beauty of Season 1? I miss the terror and joy of that abandoned mall.
Brown: It’s interesting that you mention the abandoned mall, Lorraine, because I think that’s what it all comes back to for Ellie. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve spent many hours playing as Ellie in “The Last of Us” games, or because I understand what it’s like to be an angsty teenager much more than being a parent, but I thought Episode 6 did help shed some light on Ellie and Joel’s behaviors and dynamic.
Back in Episode 4, while trying to explain her immunity to the Cordyceps fungus to Dina, Ellie mentions that there are a lot of the times she wishes she wasn’t immune. In this latest episode, we learn that one of the reasons Ellie is angry with Joel is because he lied to her about what happened back in Salt Lake City with the Fireflies. But she’s also mad at him because he took away the one thing she thought could give her life and immunity purpose. “My life would have mattered, but you took that from me,” she says to him on their porch, in what appears to have been their very last conversation.
We know that Joel’s been shaped by the guilt of not being able to save his daughter Sarah at the start of the outbreak. For Ellie, I think the loss that’s affected her the most is Riley and the guilt of surviving their trip to that abandoned mall. If she wasn’t immune, Ellie would have died that day with her best friend and first love. Because she didn’t, she needed something to help justify why she’s still alive. What greater meaning could someone find for their life in a world ravaged by a pandemic than to be the reason humanity is able to find a cure?
McNamara: I’m grateful for the episode if only because it gave my own teenagers what they wanted most — more Pedro Pascal. (I miss him too but with much less passion.) But as you say, Tracy, survivor’s guilt is real and now Ellie is eyeing another emotional burden — Joel was killed for actions he took to save her life.
Revisiting Ellie’s birthdays was very touching, bridging the changes in both characters. How the hard-edge Joel from Season 1 became the softly anguished therapy patient of Season 2. Why Ellie was so rude and dismissive toward him. She knew all along that he had lied to her about Salt Lake City, and he suspected she knew — the presents, especially the trip to the science and natural history museum, seemed equally motivated by love and penance.
On one of Ellie’s birthday’s, Joel takes her to a science and natural history museum.
(Liane Hentscher / HBO)
I also loved their time in the the space portion of the museum because it underlined the vagaries of human history — this is not the first advanced civilization to fall, leaving ruins behind. Joel remembers when humans traveled to the stars (and had the resources to build museums); for Ellie, a journey from Wyoming to Seattle is just as fraught. They were always essentially time-travelers in each others lives.
But most important for me, this episode resolved just how Ellie had left it with Joel before Abby ruined everything. The truth was finally spoken — both Joel’s and Ellie’s. That she didn’t think she could forgive him but she wanted to try. That he was taken from her before she could find her way to forgiveness must certainly drive some of the rage, no?
Ali: OK, I officially feel hard-hearted, especially since we’re discussing an episode designed to plumb the characters’ and viewers’ emotions. I’m glad Season 2 is connecting with you both, and millions more HBO and Max subscribers. Or is it HBO Max? Or plain old HBO? Regardless, this round of the series is not resonating with my adult, parenting self or my inner sullen teen, i.e. the part of my being that guides many of my rash decisions and dictates my slouchy posture. That said, I do love the chemistry between Ellie and Dina. Their love and fierce loyalty toward one another is a high point of Season 2. And it looks like they’re now going to be parents.
Brown: As Ellie says, she’s going to be a dad! The way Ellie and Dina’s relationship developed over the course of the season has been one of my favorite differences between the show and the game. But speaking of the game, the birthday trip to the museum and the porch conversation where Ellie tells Joel she wants to try to forgive him that Mary mentioned are both big flashback moments directly adapted from “The Last of Us Part II” with some minor changes. In the game, Ellie and Joel spend time checking out a dinosaur exhibit before getting to the space exploration exhibit, which I admit I’m a little sad we did not get to see. And Ellie confronting Joel about the truth of what happened in Salt Lake is a separate moment long before the porch conversation in the game.
Eugene (Joe Pantoliano) is shot by Joel after he is bitten, breaking his promise to Ellie to let him live to say goodbye to his wife, Gail. It’s a change from the video game, where the character dies of natural causes.
(Liane Hentscher / HBO)
One major difference between “The Last of Us Part II” and the show is the storyline involving Eugene and Gail. The Eugene in the game was a resident of Jackson who lived out his life until he died of natural causes in his 70s, which is something the younger generation can only dream of. Gail, on the other hand, is an original character, and my response to her introduction was mostly “hooray Catherine O’Hara, hooray therapy.” Catherine O’Hara is always a delight and it’s clear everybody living in the world of “The Last of Us” could use some therapy. But in Episode 6 we see that Eugene and Gail’s story also serves as a flashpoint in Joel and Ellie’s estrangement.
We already knew Joel had killed Eugene from his therapy session with Gail earlier in the season, but what did you think about that whole sequence, Mary? Did it affect your understanding of Joel or Ellie in any way?
McNamara: Well, I have to say that was an example of bad parenting. The patrol has rules, tough but necessary for the safety of the community. Ellie (who is, hello, freaking immune) wanted to bend them. Classic parent/child face-off. But instead of just saying “no” to her and “any last words?” to Eugene before shooting him, Joel allowed her believe she was getting her way, which was just dumb. Of course he was going to shoot Eugene; he had to shoot Eugene. But it honestly did not make sense to lie about it, especially when the lie would be exposed almost instantly. Sometimes a parent just has to be the bad guy, even if it means making Catherine O’Hara really mad at you.
And though I agree with you both about the energy of Ellie and Dina offering love in place of vengeance during their excursion to Seattle, I wish the writers could have figured out a way to bring O’Hara along.
