There wasn’t a NINA in this puzzle – the Daily Telegraph occupies the right wing of the grid entirely co-incidentally and it remains to be seen if the admirably named NEWT GINGRICH will manage to belie his position in the bottom rung!

(The definition in 1ac is meant to include the “on” and the definition for 2 dn is “targets for male seed” just to be pedantic).

On VELARIA I was going by the COED definition, which has a modern usage of the VELARIUM as a low theatre ceiling used to aid acoustics.
I should also apologise to non-football fans, and maybe to football fans if it comes to that, for defining JOSE rather obscurely as “special one” (uncapitalised). A bit naughty that, perhaps.

I’m relieved I’m not the only one to have found this difficult – and, in fact, failed to finish. [Having seen some of the solutions, I know I never would have.] Very clever stuff, as always from Bannsider.

I want to challenge the definition of 19ac: the velarium was an awning which could be drawn over the audience to protect them from the weather. It was the design of the classical theatre itself, together with the use of masks, which projected the actors’ voices, that aided the acoustics so successfully.

I’m with Pandean on Jose. I know zilch about football but I do know that Jose Mourinho describes himself as ‘the Special One’.

Re 2d, the Fed(eration) Cup is a tennis competition for women, and -ova is a common suffix for Russian women’s names (meaning “daughter of”, I think).

27a – I think OB here is the abbreviation for Latin ‘obiit’ which gives the meaning ‘(he/she) died’ rather than ‘obituary’, an appreciation of someone’s life published at the time of their death.