TOP 100 SPORT SITES
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| Ospreys 26-0 Cardiff Blues Ospreys 26-0 Cardiff BluesThe Ospreys moved back to the top of the Magners League with an emphatic victory over their close rivals and served notice to Clermont Auvergne and Leicester that they will be the team to beat when the Heineken Cup resumes this month. There is a growing authority about a side that has too often melted under pressure in the past. They were mentally and physically stronger than the subdued Blues.Dan Biggar will be the beneficiary if the Wales fly-half Stephen Jones's shoulder injury proves more serious than his region, the Scarlets, believe, after the 32-year old left the field early against Newport Gwent Dragons this week. Here, Biggar gave the Ospreys the lead with a snap drop goal and controlled the game with a growing imperiousness. The Ospreys prefer Biggar to James Hook at No10 because he takes fewer risks and is more voluble, traits the Wales coaches admire above art and craft. Hook was absent here with a shoulder injury that is expected to keep him out for another week and a typically full-blooded derby missed his subtle touches.The Blues, yet to win away in the league this season, started brightly with Casey Laulala and Sam Norton-Knight showing neat touches, but with most scrums ending in free-kicks or penalties the game stagnated. Handling was not helped when it started snowing heavily. The Ospreys exploited their forward power and their Scotland wing, Nikki Walker, scored the first try on 20 minutes after Andrew Bishop had forced a turnover from Ben Blair in the Blues' 22. Walker was soon diving over in the same spot after Biggar broke from a scrum and released his outside backs with a reverse left-handed pass.The Blues were fortunate to only trail 13-0 at the break. They threatened the Ospreys' line once, when Richard Mustoe was tackled into touch two yards out, and their midfield was defensively suspect before Tom Shanklin limped off after 33 minutes.Biggar kicked two penalties in the opening minutes of the second half and Blair hit the post with a 40-yard attempt, before the Blues prop Gary Powell was shown a yellow card for collapsing, the 15th scrum infringement of the game. After yet another scrum penalty, Ryan Jones scored in the left-hand corner to put his side out of sight.Ospreys Byrne; Bowe, Parker, Bishop, Walker; Biggar (Owen, 74), Januarie (Nutbrown, 62); James, Hibbard (H Bennett, 53), A Jones (C Griffiths, 58), Gough (Evans, 62), Thomas, Collins (F Tiatia, 70), Holah, R Jones (capt).Tries Walker 2, R Jones Con Biggar Pens Biggar 3 Drop goal Biggar.Cardiff Blues Blair (Sweeney, 70); Mustoe, Laulala, Shanklin (G Thomas, 33), James; Norton-Knight, Rees (Cooper, 70); Jenkins (capt), R Thomas, G Powell (T Filise, 63), Davies, Morgan (P Tito, 53), Warburton, Sowden-Taylor (B White, h-t; Filise, 54-63), Rush.Sin-bin Powell, 50.Referee J Jones (Bridgend) Attendance 14,476.Magners LeagueOspreysCardiff BluesRugby unionPaul Reesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Burnley put Steve Davis in charge of first-team affairs Steve Davis, the Burnley first-team coach, will take temporary charge of the side for the Barclays Premier League match against Stoke City on Saturday. feeds.timesonline.co.uk |
Mancini aims to succeed with Robinho • Manchester City manager wants consistency from Brazilian • I don't know yet what his best position is, says ItalianLike his predecessor, Roberto Mancini has had long talks with the enigma called ÂRobinho, but whereas Mark Hughes would try to make the Brazilian understand English, now the common language is Italian. "He speaks it really well," said Mancini, although the Manchester City manager did not know how someone who grew up speaking Portuguese in São Paulo and Spanish in Madrid should be so fluent in Italian. Perhaps Robinho figured he might need it some time in his career.Given that Robinho was Sheikh Mansour's £32.5m gift to City, Mancini is, like Hughes was, under pressure to bring the best from him. Perhaps wisely, given that the City chairman, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, was in the crowd, Mancini started with Robinho in his first game, against Stoke on Boxing Day. For this the manager was rewarded with a supine, forgettable display.The forward was promptly injured in the FA Cup win at Middlesbrough but is likely to start at Everton tomorrow evening, in a game that Mancini admits will provide the first real test of his regime. "It is not important to me what he cost, it is important that he plays well and works hard all game," said Mancini, whose approach can be gauged by the fact that training at Carrington Âoverran and he gave his press conference with a whistle Âhanging around his neck.Robinho's worst displays – the 2-0 defeat at Portsmouth on Valentine's Day stands out – have come in away games from Eastlands, although Mancini professed himself Âunable to understand why. "The pitch is the same, home and away," he said. Â"Robinho is technically a top player. I watched him a lot of times when he played for Real Madrid and then Manchester City. I have spoken to him but I don't want to change his mentality. He is a Brazilian and Brazilian players tend to be very Âtechnical but I think he can improve in certain Âsituations. Robinho understands this and it is important."I think he can play in different Âpositions, in attack or on the left or right [of midfield], but I don't know yet what his best position is."Mancini has said his priority in the transfer market is a defender. However, it seems unlikely that the immediate Âsuccess he has enjoyed will be backed up by a wave of early spending. The club expect to stick to their policy, agreed under Hughes, of a quiet January. Patrick Vieira, Mancini's one recruit thus far, is pencilled in to make his debut at Scunthorpe in the FA Cup a week on Sunday. The man whose last taste of the English game was scoring the winning penalty in a shoot-out in the 2005 final at the Millennium Stadium for Arsenal against Manchester United, will make his return nearly five years later in the rather more utilitarian surrounds of Glanford Park.Mancini said he had not yet talked to Emmanuel Adebayor after Togo's Âhorrific withdrawal from the Africa Cup of Nations. "I have tried but this is a difficult moment for him. I understand that when he is ready he will come back to Manchester," he said. "It is possible he will come next week or maybe in 10 days."If he returns within 10 days, Adebayor will be available for the second leg of City's Carling Cup semi-final with United at Old Trafford. Stephen Ireland should be available for the first leg on Tuesday, while Vladimir Weiss will be sent out on loan.Mancini has had a gentle introduction to Premier League management, although Stoke, Wolves and Blackburn were precisely the sort of teams Hughes's side failed to finish off. Everton, the Italian acknowledges, will be in a different order of difficulty. At the moment, he said, there are three teams who can win the championship – Chelsea, United and Arsenal. "But football is strange," he added. "In two months there could be other teams involved."Premier LeagueManchester CityRobinhoRoberto ManciniTim Richguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Bill McLaren obituary BBC sports commentator and 'the voice of rugby union' for nearly 50 yearsIt was said that Bill McLaren, who has died aged 86, was the voice of rugby. Of course, it was never said quite like he would have said it himself, in his honeyed, Borders burr, tinged with the impishness that suggested that none of this was to be taken too seriously. He would never have said anything about himself in such a way, for he was famously modest, a son of Hawick for whom a day away from his home town was a day wasted. But in truth, he was much more than rugby's voice, more its full-blown orchestra, devoted to the works of the Romantic movement, and only the Romantic.For a year short of a full half-century, first on radio and from 1962 on BBC television, Bill's voice washed over rugby union, soothing and harmonious. He saw no evil and spoke no evil. If there was violence, it was never anything more than "brief shenanigans", and nobody ever kicked a ball badly, but merely made it look a bit like one of Bill's own "scruffy nine irons".He played golf every day, come hail or shine, with his wife, Bette, whom he met at a local hop in 1947. When his body – never his voice – began to show signs of age and the second finger of his right hand curled down permanently into his palm, he was told that a simple operation might restore it to the vertical. He decided to leave well alone, since it seemed to improve his grip on his clubs.As a rugby player, he was, to borrow one of his phrases, a "tearaway flanker", a forward with the Hawick first XV, hugely promising by all accounts and fanatical from the day his father took him to see the New Zealand All Blacks at Mansfield Park, Hawick. I remember interviewing him once about his early influences, and he mentioned being impressed by the great Jack Manchester, captain of the All Blacks, in 1935. We searched and searched for images of the player and came up with a few grainy, jerky frames that stood in stark contrast to Bill's sharp recollections.The son of a knitwear salesman, during the second world war Bill found himself in Italy, a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. He was a forward spotter deep in hostile territory, often on his own, identifying enemy targets and relaying the information back to his unit. One day, drawn by the smell of decay to a village cemetery, he rounded a corner and was confronted by a mound of 1,500 corpses. The image would haunt him for the rest of his days.In 1947 he was back in Hawick and playing in a Scottish trial. But in that same year he contracted tuberculosis, and so began the second fight for his life. At the East Fortune sanatorium in East Lothian, he was selected as one of five patients to take part in trials for a new antibiotic, streptomycin. Three of the five died. Bill survived.While he convalesced, he began to commentate on table tennis for hospital radio. When he was discharged, he supplemented his work as a PE teacher with rugby reports for the Hawick Express, and was recommended from there to the BBC, joining the corporation in 1953.He had some tests along the way, especially when his son-in-law, the scrum-half Alan Lawson, or later his grandson in the same position, Rory Lawson, were playing for Scotland. Or when some of his former pupils, such as Jim Renwick, Colin Deans or Tony Stanger, scored for Scotland. But his impartiality was never questioned. The Welsh golden age of the 1970s would not have been so gilded without the soundtrack of Bill to the exploits of Gareth Edwards.Bill's preparation was meticulous and involved a lot of card-play. He would shuffle a deck and flash through the cards, matching a player with a number. Having memorised the names, he then liked to watch the players in training, listening to them. It hurt him just before his retirement in 2002 that he was once denied access to an Australian training session. Professional rugby has not always been kind to the romantics.In 2000 Bill and Bette lost their daughter Janie to cancer. It troubled him that he was not by her side when she died, but Janie had ordered him to the commentary box.It was there that Bill became music. I worked with him for a decade, one of his many "second voices". He would offer us that curled hand in a two-finger shake and a bag of Hawick balls, round brown sweets boiled in peppermint oil. He would then resume his consultation of his match chart, a mass of tiny notes in many colours, before, at kick-off, turning his back on us. It was nothing personal. It was just that Bill, given the choice of two television monitors, liked to hunch over the one closer to him. "Give me a wee tug on the sleeve, son, if you want to come in." Sometimes you had to tug away for a wee while.It simply did not matter. I suppose somebody had to be alongside him, to offer the odd jarring note, but once the game and Bill were in full flow, they were best left to themselves. Rugby for orchestra and full voice, and nobody made a sound quite like Bill McLaren.Appointed CBE in 2003, he is survived by Bette and his daughter Linda.• William Pollock McLaren, teacher and rugby commentator, born 16 October 1923; died 19 January 2010Rugby unionEddie Butlerguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Urban Meyer plans to coach Florida during spring football Florida coach Urban Meyer said he plans to coach the Gators during all of spring football, which starts March 17. But he will still take a short ... rssfeeds.usatoday.com |