My Sporting Weekend 29th April - 2nd of May:
Warm-Up's:
Engage Super League:
Castleford Tigers V Leeds Rhinos, The first half was pretty even but the Rhinos were leading 12-0 after the Tigers had 2 tries wiped off, both times Rangi Chase was adjudged to have thrown forward passes to Richard Owen in similar moves. Callum Watkins opened the scoring early on and the Rhinos then got a controversial try with Rob Burrow throwing what looked like a forward pass to Jamie Jones-Buchanan, who went over on 21 minutes. The Tigers had some good, sustained periods of pressure but they didn't get the rub of the green and ended the half without a point.
Ryan Hall opened the scoring in the 2nd half, on 53 minutes, after sneaking in just inside the corner post and they then extended their lead with Danny Maguire going over, after receiving a good offload from Jamie Peacock. Leeds then ran away with the game with Burrow scoring on 67 minutes, Paul McShane on 72, Ian Kirke on 76 and Hall, again, on 79. The Tigers did get some points, on 70 minutes with Joe Arundel going over, but apart from that they never really looked threatening in the 2nd half and even through Rangi Chase never gave up and was always looking to create something the rest of the team just weren’t their to help him. Kevin Sinfield scored all his conversions with some fantastic kicking and the final score was 48-6 to Leeds, also Jaime Peacock made his long awaited return, after being out since last August, and received a warm welcome, as he entered the game, from the Leeds fans.
Barclays Premier League:
Chelsea V Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea pretty dominated the 1st half, but were lucky to be drawing at half-time, after a fantastic thunderbolt shot from Sandro gave Tottenham the lead, Frank Lampard had a controversial goal awarded, after ball found away through the big hole in Gomes's body, he then retrieved it just before it completely crossed the line, but the linesman adjudged it to have crossed the line. Now it will be the linesman that will be blamed for the incident, and that goal-line technology has to be introduced immediately, but it was only one person's fault, and that is Gomes for putting the linesman in that position where he has to make the decision, if he had got his body behind the ball properly and made a correct save their would be no argument. Tottenham created more chances in the 2nd half but it was Chelsea who dominated again, and they eventually got the winner on 89 minutes, after Salomon Kalou toed in a Didier Drogba shot that was going wide. But it wasn’t without controversy, when, on the replays it looked as if Kalou was slightly offside. This was quite an interesting match to watch with Chelsea creating lots of chances, but Tottenham were a bit disappointing, as they seemed to find it hard to link up the ball between the midfield and Roman Pavlyuchenko, who played up front for the 1st hour or so, and although Chelsea's goals were lucky Tottenham didn't really do enough to deserve to win the game.
La Liga:
Real Sociedad V Barcelona, Barcelona fielded a 2nd string side that only included 3 regular starters (Lionel Messi, Xavi and Gerard Pique) as they looked to rest players in preparation of the 2nd leg of their Champions League semi-final against Real Madrid, on Tuesday, but unlike Real whose 2nd string, which includes such names as Kaka, Laasana Diarra and Emmanuel Adebayor, Barca's is nowhere near as strong and included 4 players with limited 1st team experience. And this inexperience showed as they couldn't close out the game, after taking the lead with a Thiago goal on 29 minutes, and Sociedad came back into the game in the 2nd half with Diego Ifrán scoring after just coming on off the bench, before Xabi Prieto got the winner with a penalty after Javier Mascherano committed a foul in the box. Like normal Barcelona had the majority of possession, and the young players fitted into their system well, but it is their ability to create good chances on target that need to be improved, as they have been a bit suspect in defence over the last month or so going into the last 1/4 of a game with a 1-0 lead, leading to late opposition goals.
Portuguese Grand Prix (Moto GP):
Within 2 lap 3 riders had come off due to cold tyres, Hector Barbera, Marco Simoncelli and Karel Abraham. Off the start Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa opened up a gap from 3rd placed Casey Stoner, and with 18 laps to go Stoner started to close the gap, but this was short lived as the front 2 pulled the gap back out. With 4 laps to go Lorenzo seem to allow Pedrosa past quite easily, so that he could then draft behind him and look to overtake fin during the final corners, but this was a costly error as Pedrosa easily opened up a gap and eventually finished 3 seconds in front of him.
Andrea Dovizioso had a good finish to the race catching Rossi and passing him on the line to take 4th. This race was pretty boring, with not much action, and I think that their needs to be more riders on the starting grid, which would hopefully increase the amount of overtaking, but the only way that this would happen would be to make it cheaper to enter the championship at a competitive level, which probably won't happen.
Itaipava São Paulo Indy 300 presented by Nestle (IndyCar):
Will Power qualified on pole for the 4th time this season and just before the race started the weather dramatically changed and a heavy rainstorm soaked the track with the race started in wet conditions. On the 1st corner Helio Castroneves seemed to get faded across into the wall, leaving nowhere for Danica Patrick, Simona Di Silvestro and Tony Kannan, who were behind him, to go, bringing out the 1st caution of the day. On the restart several more cars spun out, most on their own accord, but the green flag stayed out, and as the rain started again Vitor Meira spun into the wall damaging the rear of the car, bringing out the yellow flag. Not soon after the red flag was waved as drivers were finding it hard to keep the cars facing the right direction in the heavy rain, and with virtually no visibility. During the break race control allowed teams to work on the cars, and after about 2 hours of on and off rain the drivers received the signal to get back in their cars, and after a further half an hour they started circulating the track, under yellow flag conditions, with all the drivers running. The cars circulated for 7 laps behind the safety car, but race control then postponed the race for 24 hours due to the unsafe nature of the track, and it also looked as it would become a timed race.
The race re-started on Monday morning and as soon as they took the green flag the rain started to fall again, and after a mad dash for wet tyres, the yellow flags were back out after Sebastian Bourdais spun out with no contact, as did Ryan Hunter-Reay who damaged his 2nd rear wing of the race. On the restart Takuma Sato, who was on a full wet set-up, made a good move down the outside of Power to take the lead, but before the lap was complete the yellows were out again. A few laps after restarting Dario Franchitti locked up at the end of the straight, missed the turn, and ended up in the tyres, but he kept it running and got back to the pits for a new nose cone, and as this happening Alex Tagliani spun around bringing out another full course caution, during which most cars pitted for what looked like their last pit of the race. Patrick and Kaanan, who were both 9 laps down had a good battle between themselves, as well as everybody else around them, and after being blocked by EJ Viso, which got him a black flag, Marco Andretti rolled the dice and was the 1st driver to go to slick tyres with 13 minutes to go (the race did end up being a timed race). But the gamble didn't pay off as the track hadn't fully dried out, with him finished in 14th, and with 8 minutes to go, leader, Sato had to pit, as he was about to run out of fuel, leaving Power to take the race win with a second lead over Grahame Rahal. After the race eventually got going their was some good racing and overtaking, but I would assume that not many saw it due to the delays, as well as Sky seeming to pull it at the last minute, after announcing on their website that it would be on.
Main Event:
Clydesdale Bank 40 Group A (Cricket):
Yorkshire V Derbyshire, Derbyshire opened the batting and both teams seemed to play quite defensive during the 1st innings, with Yorkshire only taking 2 wickets, Ryan Sidebottom taking Chesney Hughes for 11 and Ajmal Shahzad taking Usman Khawaja for 20, but as they reached their batting powerplay Derbyshire started to increase their run rate, getting 31 during the 4 overs and then Yorkshire started to take more wickets. Wes Durston scored 95, off 91, before Shahzad made a fantastic 1 handed diving catch to dismiss him, several players came and went quite quickly, Jonathan Clare, Steffan Jones, Garry Park all for only 11, as well as Greg Smith who got 30 before being bowled by Sidebottom. Wayne Madsen had a good innings getting 66, off 41, before being stumped by Brophy in the last over and Derbyshire reached 245, for 8, off their 40 overs. This seemed to be quite a competitive score, especially after the start they had, and only getting 9 in the 4 over bowling powerplay. Yorkshire's 2 front line spinners were expensive giving away 105 off the 14 overs they bowled between them.
Adam Lyth and Andrew Gale opened the batting for Yorkshire and Lyth was dismissed in the 6th over, for 15, after making a steady start and they made 42 during the opening powerplay. Gale and Joe Root built a long partnership over 18.3 overs, but only scored 90 between them before Root was out. Jonathan Baistow came in, but could only get 4, off 9 balls, before being caught by Hughes and in the next over Gale was bowled and caught by Durston, after scoring 74 off 101 balls, and this left Yorkshire needing 101 off 70 balls. The Yorkshire batting collapse then continued with Gerard Brophy, Richard Pyrah, Shahzad, David Wainwright and Sidebottom all coming and leaving pretty sharpish, with single figures, as well as Joe Sayers and Adil Rashid both getting 12, as Derbyshire bowled Yorkshire out for 193 with an over left. Derbyshire's bowlers had really good performances, with only Jake Needham having an economy higher than 6, as well as not taking a wicket, and Durston was the well deserved man of the match after scoring 95 with the bat and taking 3 wickets with the ball. After having batting collapses against Nottinghamshire, in a Country match, and in this game, as well as losing to Holland, in a CB40 match, Yorkshire need to get some consistency in their game if they are wanting to challenge for any titles this season.
Cool-Down's:
Sheffield United have been finally relegated after dragging it out for an extra few games, and it looks like next season could be a struggle to, with a wage bill supposedly between 10 and 12 million pounds this season, the loss of TV, sponsorship and corporate income next season means that the wage bill needs to be slashed drastically to they don't want to dip into McCabe's pockets.
The Sheffield Predators, who are an American Football team, have moved to Dronfield and will be playing on Gosforth fields. So hopefully, if the weather stays nice, I will have a walk across the valley and check out a few of their games, especially as I have never seen American Football live, but have been watching on TV for years. Their 1st home game is the 29th of May at 1pm.
Recent Results:
Npower League 1 (Football): Bristol Rovers 1 Sheffield Wednesday 1
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