My Sporting Weekend 12-13th of March:
Warm-Up's:
Evo-Stick South (Football):
Sheffield FC V Rushall Olympic, Rushall started the match well as they created some good chances before Nick Amos scored from a header, off a corner, on 13 minutes. Soon after Sheffield's keeper, Dan Whatsize, came rushing out to clear a high looping ball, before mis-timing his jump and flicking the ball back towards his own goal, two
Rushall players were through on goal and Danny Lennon shot from just inside the area, but the ball rolled wide of the open goal, it what was probably the worst miss I have ever seen. Rushall were dominating at this point but Sheffield got themselves back into the game after an intelligent free kick from Chris Adam on 35 minutes. The Rushall keeper, Chris Gemmell, was shielding the ball out for a goal kick, but pressure from Adam caused him to bring the striker down, Adam then took a quick free kick, from an incredible tight angle by the byline, that looped over the retreating keeper and curled into the open net. Sheffield were lucky to be going into halftime with the scoreline of 1-1 as Rushall had most of the play and Sheffield hardly created any chances.
During half time an announcement was made for an officially qualified referee to step forward, and after a slight delay the announcer stepped up the mark and took his position on the side line, vacated by the lineman who was now reffing the game. The second half started pretty even until Rushall's Matthew Lewis scored from a penalty, after Ahmed Obeng was taken down in the box, on 61 minutes. Rushall then got their 3rd 3 minutes later after Obeng had good control in the box, before turning and pulling it back for Danny Ashton to put it in off the crossbar. After that point Sheffield had a lot of the ball, and made a couple of chances but never looked like scoring. The match was looked as if it was drawing out to a 3-1 Rushall win, until Sheffield won a free kick, on 87 minutes, on the edge of the area and a deflection off Rushall's Ashton found its way past the keeper. For the final few minutes of the game Sheffield pushed players forward but never created anything leaving them to lose the game 3-2. Rushall played well and deserved the win as Sheffield never really were on top during the game, apart from the start if the second half, and on another day Rushall's Lennon could have scored several goals but today he had no luck and had some pretty poor misses.
The FA Cup (Football):
Manchester United v Arsenal, Arsenal started the match on top having most of the possession and creating a few chances, as Man U dropped back and allowed Arsenal to attack them, but Man U got the breakthrough, on 27 minutes, with Fabio scoring after a blocked shot from Javier Hernandez. Man U were playing a 4-4-2 formation but Rooney was coming back too deep leaving Hernandez isolated on his own up front against the Arsenal defence. Antonio Valencia made his come back from a broken leg coming on at half time for Fabio as Man U switched to a 4-5-1 formation with Rooney playing on the left wing. Man U doubled their lead 4 minutes into the second half with Rooney scoring a header, from another blocked Hernandez shot. Arsenal played out the last 10 minutes of the game with 10 men as Johan Djourou had to be stretchered off with a shoulder injury and they had used their allocation of subs. Arsenal had created the most chances during the match but Man U keeper Edwin Van Der Sar had a great game keeping them out. Even though Man U have had injury problems, playing 3 defenders in midfield made it look as if they were not taking the match that seriously, and were looking towards the Marseille match midweek, but they played better than last weeks performance against Liverpool and quite comfortably beat Arsenal in the end. Arsenal's season is currently falling apart, from having the chance to win 4 trophies 2 weeks ago, they can now only win the league. But last weeks draw at home to Sunderland was a missed opportunity to catch Man U even further as they lost to Liverpool, but they do have a game in hand and are only trailing by 3 points, so if they can put together a good run and keep key players fit they may have a chance of lifting the title.
La Liga (Football):
Real Madrid v Hercules, Real Madrid dominated the first half with Kareem Benzema scoring on 23 minutes after some good passing play through the box, but Hercules did create a few chances, forcing Iker Casillias to make a couple of saves. In the second half Benzema got his 2nd goal, after cutting in across the box from the left wing, before firing into the far corner, after the second goal Hercules never looked like scoring and Real Madrid didn't really create that many more chances. With Christiano Ronaldo out injured Emmanuel Adebayor played the full game but didn't have much of the ball and when he did he never looked dangerous. Benzema did have a good game, as he has done over the last couple of weeks, and will surely be pushing Gonzalo Higuaín, when he is fit, for a place in the starting line-up.
WBO Super-Featherweight Title (Boxing):
Ricky Burns V Joseph Laryea, This was Ricky Burns's second defence of his WBO title, fighting the Ghanaian Joseph Laryea, in front of a partizan Glasgow crowd. Both boxers are quite tall and spindly and they looked at bit out of place fighting at this weight. The fight started quite tight and slow with a lot of short jabs, the early rounds were close with Burns just edging it, Lareya had a good 4th round, but Burns came back in the 5th, and started to dominate the fight and in what seemed quite a shock decision, at the time, Lareya retired after the 7th round, but it turned out he had injured his hand, breaking a knuckle. This gave Burns the victory and he is now looking towards a possible unification fight.
Main Event:
The Co-Operative Championship (Rugby League):
Sheffield Eagles V Widnes Vikings, The 2011 Championship season kicked off on a lovely sunny afternoon at Bramall Lane with Sheffield Eagles being the first pro sports team to wear a kit promoting a anti-homophobic message with the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans History Month, Pride Sports and “Homophobia: Tackle It!” logos emblazoned across the shirt.
Widnes started the game well, having all the possession and forcing 2 drop-outs before Steve Tyrer went over for the first score of the game on 7 minutes, when Sheffield eventually got hold of the ball they won a penalty before Dane McDonald got a try on 13 minutes. A dummy from Widnes's Thomas Coyle left a big gap in Sheffield's defence and Simon Finnigan went over for an easy score on 22 minutes, and 4 minutes later Sheffield's sliding defence couldn't keep out Tyrer for his second try as he stepped inside. Widnes then got their 4th try of the game, 3 minutes later, when Kirk Netherton went over from dummy half on the goal line. A penalty for a high tackle gave Sheffield field position and Alex Rowe went over on 32 minutes, and Corey Hanson went over soon after, after a break from New signing Quentin Laulu-Togagae and a cross-field kick from Simon Brown, but this was chalked off as the furthest official from the action ruled a Sheffield player was offside.
The Half-time score was 12-22 with Widnes dominating most of the first half, but Sheffield's two trys kept them in the game and they had some good play towards the end of the half. After a handling error by Sheffield, Widnes's Allen got over on their first possession of the half for their 5th try of the game. A 60 metre run from Widnes's James Ford was stopped by a fantastic try saving tackle from Tim Bergin, but Sheffield's defence couldn't regroup and Finnigan got over for his second try of the game, and a seemingly unassailable 20 point lead. Sheffield did get another try, responding straight away with Corey Hanson going over down the right hand side on 63 minutes. But another error off the kick-off gave Widnes the ball back and Allen went over 2 minutes after the last score, Allen then completed his hat-trick on 74 minutes. The game finished 44-16 to Widnes but to an extent Sheffield played well in defence in patches, but giving away silly penalty's gave Widnes the ball back in good field position, and a team that has that much possession is always going to score, no matter how good the defence is. Also Sheffield didn't look that dangerous going forward and their kicking within Widnes's 20 metre line was pretty poor, not being able to force any drop-outs and the 2 good kicks led to an offside and a knock-on by Sheffield players. Sheffield's next match is away at York on Thursday night, in front of the Sky cameras, and with Menzie Yere and maybe a few of their dual-registration backs, from Bradford and Huddersfield, in the team hopefully they can put on a good performance and get the win.
Cool-Down's:
England's loss to Bangladesh in the Cricket World Cup left them needing to beat the West Indies in their final group match, and other results to go their way, to have any chance of getting through to the quarter finals.
Also over the weekend the ECB announced that they have agreed with Cricket Australia to shorten future ODI series's, but will this really help to reduce burn out. Yes I think that a 7 game series is too long anyway as from a general fans perspective it is too many games to hold their attention, also potentially playing in 3 dead rubbers does not look too good for an outsiders perspective. If the last series in Australia was reduced to 5 games it would have meant that the players would have got home a week earlier, but is an extra weeks rest going to make that much difference going into a 6 week long World Cup, after a 3 month tour of Australia. Another thing they are doing in the future is moving the cycle of Ashes series backward a year so that they do not clash with world cup years.
But on of the things that I think should be looked at the playing of shorter series inbetween tours, for example last year they visited the UAE to play Pakistan in 2 T20 games before going to Bangladesh, even though Pakistan were scheduled to come to England later that summer and play in a series that included t20 games and they also played Australia, in England, in a 5 game ODI series, even though they had played Australia in a 7 games series the previous year, in England. Surely these periods would be better used as rest periods, also these matches seem to be played to extract the maximum amount of money out of the England fans.
Recent Results:
Npower League 1: Sheffield Wednesday 0 Notts County 1
ICC Cricket World Cup: Bangladesh: 227-8 (49.0 overs)
England: 225 (49.4 overs)
England: 225 (49.4 overs)
Bangladesh beat England by 2 wickets
No comments:
Post a Comment