Another sporting round-up
Another sporting week as we approach the British summer and inevitably some of the old Rust chestnuts come to the fore. Here’s a pot pourri of those that caught my eye recently:
PERFORMANCE-ENHANCING DRUGS
With the Commonwealth Games on Australia’s Gold Coast about to begin we have already been treated to its first mention in this respect – the discovery of a batch of suspicious needles in the athletes’ village.
On last weekend’s Joshua/Parker bill at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff – in the chief supporting bout to the Joshua/Parker main event – we had the old-fashioned pleasure of seeing 38 year-old Russian Alexander pole-axing ‘chinny’ Liverpudlian beanpole David Price in the 5th round. The result was diminished only slightly by the fact that the former had his 2017 lifetime ban for persistent use of drugs – issued on 3rd March, lifted on 8th December – whipped away just in time to return to the WBC rankings in January and thereby give him the opportunity to be where he was on Saturday … since when he is now being touted as a worthy candidate for a world title bout later this year.
And then we come to yesterday’s news about a former ‘golden boy’ of the light-middleweight and middleweight divisions – Canelo Alvarez – see here, as reported today on the website of – THE GUARDIAN
ENGLISH RUGBY PREMIERSHIP FINANCES
My colleague Sandra McDonnell has long been reporting upon the parlous state of the finances of rugby union’s elite clubs in England.
On Tuesday Owen Slot of The Times produced a devastating indictment of the situation, detailing the fact that only one of the twelve Premiership clubs (the reigning champions Exeter Chiefs) made a profit in their latest annual accounts.
Worcester Warriors, one of three clubs currently up for sale, somehow managed to post a £4 million loss whilst Saracens, Harlequins and London Irish – the last of these now doomed to relegation after a disastrous season following their promotion from the Championship at the end of last year – all lost north of £2.7 million each.
Now we receive confirmation that Saracens, last season’s European Rugby Championship winners and widely suspected of being one of the four teams implicated in the salary cap breach scandal of eighteen months ago, may be up for sale. See here for Gavin Mairs’ report today on the website of the – DAILY TELEGRAPH
AN OASIS OF SPORTING ANTICIPATION
At least we sports fans have the the opening day of the US Masters tournament to look forward to tomorrow.
From my perspective the field looks about as open as ever I can remember, but perhaps it was inevitable that the preview stories have majored upon the ‘miraculous’ resurrection of Tiger Woods’ fitness and his prospects of wearing the green blazer come Sunday evening.
I’m not a betting man, but frankly I’m convinced that all this “Tiger’s back!” euphoria is not worth a hill of beans.
Here’s a link to to a more sober and realistic set of predictions, as spotted on the website of – GOLF.COM
