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| St Helens pick Giants for semi-final • Saints will face Giants in Knowsley Road's last match• Warriors sent to Leeds for replay of brutal encounterSt Helens made no secret of their distaste for the Club Call system that forced them to select Huddersfield as the team they must beat to reach a fifth consecutive Super League Grand Final. However, Saints were only too pleased to send Wigan, the fierce local rivals who were their other option, across the Pennines for what promises to be a bitter and bruising second semi‑final against the champions, Leeds."It's a bit of a daft system, if you ask me," said Keiron Cunningham, the veteran Saints hooker who will now make his last Knowsley Road appearance against the Giants on Friday night. "If anything it gives the other side added motivation but that's the way the cookie crumbles. After the tussle that Leeds and Wigan had together last week it will good to see Wigan going back across there for them to knock ten bells out of each other again."Cunningham will retire at the end of the season, when Saints will leave Knowsley Road. They will play the bulk of their home games next year in Widnes, until their new stadium is completed in August. Some romantics had suggested that St Helens might therefore take the chance to invite Wigan, who won the last league derby at the ground, on Good Friday, for the final farewell.Others, including Tony Smith and Adrian Morley – the Warrington coach and captain whose season was ended last night by a 34-22 Huddersfield victory that was as impressive as it was unexpected – had warned Saints against choosing the Giants on the assumption that they would be easily dispatched en route to Old Trafford."Yeah, they're dangerous," said Smith. Morley added: "They'll be a handful for anyone."However, the decision, which was taken by the St Helens coach, Mick Potter, after consultation with senior players such as Cunningham via text message this morning, was a straightforward one. Potter said that a couple of players had expressed a preference for Wigan but they were comfortably outvoted. As the Saints chief executive, Tony Colquitt, said when announcing the choice: "Stick with the ranking system, take all the emotion out of the decision and go with the lowest ranked club. So the team we would like to invite to Knowsley Road for the last competitive game at this stadium is Huddersfield Giants."The Giants finished fifth in the table, four places and 11 points behind Wigan, but they have the best recent form of any of the four remaining contenders – the win at Warrington was their seventh in succession since an unlucky one-point defeat at Leeds in July."We've got good players coming into form at the right time and our squad's pretty healthy," said Nathan Brown, the Huddersfield coach, having calmed down from an exuberant celebration of Leroy Cudjoe's match-clinching try at Warrington. "We feel we've as good a chance as anybody else."The Australian dismissed the club's long winless run at Knowsley Road, which goes back to 1978, as an irrelevance. He also left no doubt that he would seek to use the Club Call system to his team's advantage, as the Catalans Dragons did after being selected by Leeds last year. "Obviously Saints would prefer to play us rather than Wigan," said Brown. He will not need to repeat that message to his players.Neither will motivation be a problem for Wigan or Leeds, after the latter's dramatic 27-26 win at the DW Stadium in the first round of the play-offs that was followed by some tasteless taunting of the Rhinos stand-off Danny McGuire by Wigan players and supporters as he lay on the ground with knee ligament damage. The Rhinos hope to have the England forward Jamie Jones-Buchanan back for the first time since he suffered an ankle injury in the Challenge Cup final defeat by Warrington at Wembley last month, but the absence of McGuire and the England captain, Jamie Peacock, will make Wigan favourites to reach their first Grand Final since 2003.Cunningham is simply relieved that Wigan have not been given the chance to ruin the farewell to Knowsley Road. Only he could get away with the negativity in a typically honest assessment of the Club Call verdict: "We'd rather lose to Huddersfield than to Wigan."Super LeagueSt HelensHuddersfield GiantsLeeds RhinosWigan WarriorsRugby leagueAndy Wilsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Boise State gets last BCS test in form of Oregon State The skeptics were already back in the ears of the Boise State Broncos five days after what was supposed to be a signature win against Virginia ... rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Hughes ban leaves title chase in balance • Appeal dismissal hands advantage to Paul Hanagan• Rider admits jockeys' championship bid will be hardOne of the most closely fought battles for the jockeys' championship in recent years was stopped in its tracks this morning when Richard Hughes lost his appeal against a six-day ban for careless riding, imposed by the stewards at Wolverhampton last Saturday.Hughes remains 11 winners behind Paul Hanagan, who has led the race from an early stage, and will now miss a total of seven days because of suspension before the season ends on 6 November. The second day of the Breeders' Cup meeting in Kentucky takes place the same afternoon, with Hughes expected to leave for the United States no later than the morning of 5 November, suggesting that his sustained run at the title is now effectively over.William Hill are still betting on the jockeys' championship but make Hanagan a 1-8 chance to maintain his lead while Hughes is 9-2 to stage a highly unikely recovery.Hughes was riding Aviso, who was drawn in one of the outside stalls, in a handicap, and was found to have caused interference to several of his opponents on the short run into the first turn.Hughes had left for Newbury, where he has several fancied rides, before the British Horseracing Authority's appeal panel delivered its verdict yesterday, following a 65-minute hearing and a period of deliberation that lasted no more than 20 minutes. He heard the news that his appeal had failed from Andrew Chalk, his solicitor."It's hard to say much as we don't know the reasons yet," Chalk said. "I thought that they could have stuck it into "increased interference" [the next category down from considerable] and knocked a couple of days off, and that would have been a good result."I thought they could have given him a bit more credit as well [because] he did actually look [to his inside]. You see races often where nobody looks at all and there's carnage on the inside. He tried to do the right thing, but he just cocked it up, frankly."We all make mistakes and errors of judgement, but to get a six-day ban for it at this stage of this season in particular is obviously a bitter pill for Richard to swallow."Horse racingPaul HanaganGreg Woodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
What did Brett Favre do wrong? Legal experts uncertain As the NFL probes whether Brett Favre acted inappropriately toward Jets employee Jenn Sterger during his lone season with New York in 2008, the ... rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Wheeler set for European Rugby Cup • Premier Rugby is lobbying for Leicester director• ERC meets on 3 November and he needs French votesPremier Rugby is lobbying for the Leicester director Peter Wheeler to become the chairman of European Rugby Cup Ltd, the body that runs the Heineken Cup.The position has been held by Jean-Pierre Lux since 1999. He fell out with the French and English clubs three years ago when they threatened to pull out of the Heineken Cup and the Challenge Cup in a dispute over shareholding and voting rights.The board of ERC meets on 3 November and the agenda sent out this week includes the election of the chairman. It is understood Lux wants to carry on and Wheeler would need the support of the French clubs who, like Premier Rugby, have 2.5 of the 18 votes held by the directors. If the Rugby Football Union, which also has 2.5 votes, sided with Wheeler, he would need two other votes to beat Lux.Premier Rugby has this week flexed its muscles over player release, alarming Wales and Scotland in particular. The Welsh Rugby Union, which has four Premiership players in contention for a place in next year's World Cup squad, reacted indignantly, saying it was not prepared to be blackmailed by Premier Rugby, which this month sent a letter to team managers of countries all over the world pointing out when clubs were obliged to release players for international duty in the next year.The Wales coach, Warren Gatland, called Premier Rugby's stance "unacceptable and ridiculous", saying it could result in players missing out on the World Cup because they would not be able to attend national training camps next July as they fell outside the International Rugby Board's period for mandatory release.Scotland, who have nearly one quarter of their 34-strong squad based in England and more to lose, have been far less strident in their criticism. "We've been working with the IRB, the RFU and Premier Rugby to make sure that we have a solution that is right for Scotland for the World Cup," said their coach, Andy Robinson."My whole focus is on getting the best preparations for a player to perform on the world stage. The discussions that we've been having with the RFU and the PRL have been positive: we're pleased with where we are currently. We've asked for the players to be released for the World Cup earlier than 4 August and those discussions are continuing. We will not be paying for the release of players."That is not financially. What may help Scotland's case is if they support the nomination of Wheeler for the ERC chairmanship. Their two votes would probably take him past the 9.5 he would need to dislodge Lux and give Premier Rugby, which has been critical in the past of the way ERC has been run, a position of authority. In return the Scots would gain the release of their England-based players for pre‑tournament camps.The ERC board meeting will decide whether Saracens should be fined up to €10,000 (£x,xxx) for failing to bring their captain, Steve Borthwick, to the Cardiff launch of the tournament last month while its chief disciplinary officer, Roger O'Connor, will recommend whether the club's director of rugby, Brendan Venter, should be called to account for critical remarks he made last weekend about refereeing in the Heineken Cup.Heineken CupPremiershipRugby unionPaul Reesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |