Category Archives: Sport

And back in the clubhouse, Collins asked his team-mates for the day if he could wear their club socks while playing for Barbarians against South Africa at Twickenham a month later.

“There is Jerry Collins of New Zealand and Barnstaple,” said commentator Stuart Barnes as the Kiwi strode into challenge wearing red socks.

From studying just under 1,000 student athletes, around half at the elite Division One level, the athletes were able to ignore electrical noise in the brain in order to better process external sounds such as a teammate or coach giving instructions.

The study’s author, Nina Kraus of Northwestern University said: “No one would argue against the fact that sports lead to better physically fitness, but we don’t always think of brain fitness and sports.

“We’re saying that playing sports can tune the brain to better understand one’s sensory environment.”

“A serious commitment to physical activity seems to track with a quieter nervous system,” Kraus said. “And perhaps, if you have a healthier nervous system, you may be able to better handle injury or other health problems.”

College level athletes in the US are usually pretty good. This is a lot more selective that peeps turning out for the college third team in the UK.

How much of this is going to be because people at that level of anything are pretty good at concentrating?

Certain screams in the distance.

Tottenham? Mourinho?

For breaching the salary cap. Anyone know the details?

Rough reading around says arrangements with layers involving Companies House and the Land Registry.

So, what were they doing? Here’s a shareholding in a nice little earner to top up your wages? Here’s a reduced rate on your mortgage? What?

Nigel Wray as always been very – what’s the word I’m looking for, canny? – in his stock market dealings.

New Zealander adrift in tiny dinghy in Aegean survived on boiled sweets during 40 hour ordeal

Well, not fun I’m sure but ordeal seems a bit strong. 40 hours without fresh water is indeed a strain but again, ordeal seems a bit too strong a word for it.

Next year in Jerusalem, eh?

That’s a surprise then.

And that’s even without counting two tries*.

*Well, sorta. One probably.

Why the All Blacks’ ‘no dickheads’ policy is simply a New Zealand myth

If adopted elsewhere, would leave the Saffas* team sheet a bit short, wouldn’t it?

*Insert whoever you don’t like to taste here.

We have the Paralympics. Which have complicated classes for disability. Cognitive lacks play over here in one class, limb lacks over here in another, sight there and so on. There are even classes within classes to that we get swims where everyone is called Bob.

We already classify by the exigencies and happenstances of genetics and accident. Because it is entirely obvious to all that those without the brain to tie their own shoelaces aren’t going to do all that well against Magic Johnson. That those with the one and only functioning limb will, by the very nature of these things, paddle slower than Duncan Goodhew. Even at the ages of those two sportsmen.

There will, in fact, be no sport unless we do classify.

None of this is about righteous nor just. It’s about this simple point that sport requires uncertainty. It must be possible for there to be the race.

Male musculature as against female? What race? Therefore we should indeed distinguish and classify.

And don’t forget that by drawing a line there will always be some unfairly on the one side of it. Internal testicles making one not a woman for the purposes of racing? High testosterone levels in an Indian sprinter?

OK. The alternative being the demolition of women’s sport as a category as the male physique conquers.

Someone’s going to get screwed, sure, but who should it be? Probably the few, right? Not the all?

We’ve these World Masters Track Cycling races. And there’s a subset: Female 35-39 Time Trial

OK. Is there prize money for this?

And if so, how much is that prize money for the bronze medallist?

There was no such reprieve for the northeastern town of Kamaishi, where flooding had left the organisers with no choice but to cancel the lunchtime game between Canada and Namibia.
…..
With their match at the Recovery Memorial Stadium cancelled, Canadian players grabbed shovels and helped clear the mud from Kamaishi’s streets.

Nowt larger than that, just well done, vry well done those men.

That was more like watching the Barbars than a test team, wasn’t it? Very fun indeed.

And that man who was trying to play a haggis looked wonderfully pissed off. Good.

Former Wales rugby captain Gareth Thomas has revealed that he is HIV positive, declaring via Twitter that he wants to “break the stigma” around the condition.

The first out international sportsman – and thereby rugby player – is HIV positive?

England cricket: an apology from The Times
We may have given the impression in Saturday’s Times that Joe Root’s England side had “No fight, no idea, no hope” after they were bowled out for a dismal 67 in their first innings.

We now recognise that they are among the finest, battling sides this country has ever produced. We are happy to make this clear.

Two face jail after watching footage of Emiliano Sala’s post-mortem

They face jail for stealing the footage, not watching it.

Sherry Bray, 49, and Christopher Ashford, 62, appeared at Swindon Crown Court on Friday where they admitted accessing CCTV footage of Sala’s post-mortem examination.

Ashford, of Calne, admitted three counts of securing unauthorised access to computer material between February 9 and 11 this year.

Bray, of Corsham, admitted three counts of securing unauthorised access to computer material between April last year and February this year.

First gay couple to play Wimbledon doubles call for backing from the sport

Yesterday’s man is today’s Masters champion. Impossibly, ridiculously, Tiger Woods is back on top in golf again, with his fused back, his pile of lost years and his talent somehow back from the dead.

I guess we could say he’s back….

A former football club chairman is suing his divorce lawyers claiming they failed to warn him that promotion to the Premier League would result in an extra £2.25 million pay off to his ex-wife.

Huw Jenkins OBE, 56, the former Swansea City boss, claims he was told by solicitors that his finances were “not stable enough” to reach a financial settlement with his wife Sian, 50, while the club was in the lower league.

However just three months later Swansea City won promotion from the Championship in 2011 to play the likes of Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal.

This resulted in his personal wealth massively increasing and when the divorce was finally settled in 2017, Mr Jenkins was ordered to pay his ex-wife a £2.25 million lump sum.

Divorce involves the settlement of the marital finances. If there’s more of them then there’ll be a bigger amount paid over. And, even if we take the more restrictive view of only those assets created or accumulated during the marriage itself this is still going to apply here, isn’t it?

Thus, how could the outcome be otherwise?

Whether his lawyers should have told him is another thing. But that he didn’t instinctively grasp this is showing a certain lack of nous, eh? Or, possibly, a certain amount of trying it on. As anyone who makes enough to then be able to buy into a football club has a certain amount of financial nouse, nu?

Sorta Galton’s Ox without the slaughter and dressing?

A British man who won the world camel weighing championships found himself embroiled in an animal rights row after the competition was deemed ‘barbaric’.

Can’t be much of a spectator sport really. Then I find out that’s not what they mean:

Qasim Hussain, 20, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, traveled to Pakistan to compete in the Kharack Mirpur annual event where the animals are weighed down with rocks before standing to prove their strength.

Mr Hussain’s four-year-old camel, Sheezada Kathreela, was loaded up with bags of stones weighing 1,800kg on his humps and back before getting to its feet and walking around in front of 20,000 spectators.

Perhaps camel weighting contest is more apt?

The state of Qatar secretly offered $400m to Fifa just 21 days before they were awarded the 2022 World Cup, leaked files appear to show.

The documents, seen by The Sunday Times, reportedly reveal that executives from the Qatari state-run broadcaster Al Jazeera – that was owned and controlled by Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani – signed a television contract making the huge offer.

The contract is said to have also included an unprecedented success fee of $100m that would be paid to Fifa only if Qatar was successful in the 2010 World Cup ballot.

The documents allegedly read: “In the event that the 2022 competition is awarded to the state of Qatar, Al Jazeera shall, in addition to the . . . rights fee, pay to Fifa into the designated account the monetary amount of $100m.”

Fifa sells the broadcast rights. That the broadcast rights are sold comes as less than a surprise therefore.

If Al Jazeera was going to hire the idiot nephews of every Fifa board member on $million contracts for advice over the broadcast rights then we’d have something. To the extent that we don’t already think they didn’t.