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| Coyotes goalie named to Russia's Olympic hockey team Phoenix Coyotes goalie Ilya Bryzgalov has been named to Russia's Olympic hockey team for the upcoming Winter Games in Vancouver bizjournals.com |
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 |
Kraner aims for consistency in exercise routine What’s your Routine? feeds.bizjournals.com |
Barney Ronay: Is the IPL auction exciting or stupid? Discussion over batting and bowling averages have been replaced with players' value in hard cashThis week saw a clearing of the decks – including the traditional last-minute wrangle with the England and Wales Cricket Board over who owns Paul Collingwood – ahead of Tuesday's 2010 IPL player auction. It's hard to know what to think about this. The IPL is still a confusing event even for the halitosis-ridden, Pot Noodle-reared, format-promiscuous cricket obsessive, for whom I feel I can cautiously speak. Fashionable opinion holds that the IPL is a form of cricketing revolution, a decisive power-shift from wonkily extrapolated Victorian lawn game to subcontinental billionaire's beano; a post-colonial land grab set to the music of Haddaway and Maroon Five and spiced with lingering shots of bored well-groomed women in big sunglasses.English cricket, on the other hand, has tended to see the IPL in the same way the English once viewed America, as an essentially silly thing that will, with any luck, soon blow over or go away. Three years into its strangely dreamlike and fevered existence, it still feels as if the IPL could go either way. Is it a fatally underrated agent of change? Or something entirely self-sustaining, a goons' rodeo of careening self-importance, Ozymandias in pyjamas?Maybe the auction will offer some more hints. This is, after all, an event that has a voodoo grip on England's Test team, for whom every thunk of the price-tag gun is like a hatpin to the heart. Last year's auction overlapped with England being bowled out for 51 in Jamaica. This time around we've already seen auction hopeful Jonathan Trott flailing about like a half-cut gamekeeper chasing squirrels with a yard broom during the collapse at the Wanderers.The auction is unlike anything that has ever happened in any sport, but entirely in tune with the IPL's flat-packed transactional theatre. The IPL needed a transfer market: and here is one in its most literal form, a clearing house where cricket's traditional measure, statistics, is replaced by an unarguable cash value.It must be thrilling, and frightening, to have your worth so mercilessly totted up. Perhaps not for Trott and Eoin Morgan, hard-bitten hired guns for whom the IPL is a natural home. But you fear for the Scratchcard hopefuls Usman Afzaal and rank outsider Anthony McGrath, whose defiant yen to play at the IPL after resigning the Yorkshire captaincy brings to mind the kind of ballsy middle-aged divorcee who gets her hair done and buys a sports car with the number plate PARTIGRL and goes off on a riotous waiter-fellating cruise of the Greek islands.The IPL is clearly important. But is this just because it's new and rich? It has always seemed shocking that cricket could go from an aura of august and starchy reserve to prostrating itself before a podium-gyrating version of sporting mammon, Big Money Twenty20's pure sporting pornography, a thrusting, gurning shortcut to an endless money shot, in this case the pinch-bludgeoned, cow corner switch-scoop. Not that our auction lots will be concerned as they flex and grin for the casting panel. The IPL is important, but it seems increasingly unlikely to destroy anything. It's too sui generis, too one‑track and – with an exhausting 60 matches over 40 days – too bloated with its own founding greed to look like an exclusive version of the future.IPLCricketBarney Ronayguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Herbst wins World Cup slalom over icy course SCHLADMING, Austria (AP) -- Reinfried Herbst of Austria mastered the icy Planai course for a second straight year in winning the World Cup night slalom Tuesday.... hosted.ap.org |