My Sporting Weekend 9-10th July 2011:
The 1st thing I caught during the weekend was the final 10km, or so, of the 14th stage of the Tour De France as the leaders were climbing the final, of 3, big climbs that they had to face during the day.
Sandy Casar was leading, with a gap of around 50 seconds, but Jelle Vanendert made a break from the chasing pack and caught him with about 6km to go, before taking the stage victory with a lead of 21 seconds. In this chasing pack of about 10 riders their was yellow jersey holder Thomas Voeckler, as well as last years champion Alberto Contador, and the Schleck brothers, and after allowing Vanendert, who was no threat in the GC, to ride off their was some jockeying between the pack before Samuael Sanchez, and then, Andy Schleck broke away as they tried to catch up with Vanendert in the General Classification.
Next up I saw the final 5 races of the FIM Speedway World Cup, and although the meeting was nearly finished their was still a lot of action to come, starting with the 21st race finishing in virtually a dead heat for 3rd place. This was between the Aussie Darcy Ward and the Dane Nicki Pedersen, who was originally given 3rd, but after review this overturned and 3rd place was given to Pedersen, leaving the Aussies 5 points behind leaders Poland. In the next race Aussie Trot Batchelor took the victory, but a 2nd place for Janusz Kolodziej left the Poles with a 4 point lead with 3 races to go, so in a move to try and catch the Poles by being able to play their Joker, the Aussies threw the next race with Davey Watt finishing in 4th. This meant that Chris Holder had to win the penultimate race, but a 3rd placed finish gave the Poles their 3 consecutive World Cup victory, as Jaroslaw Hampel came 2nd and Nicki Pedersen took the win.
The final race then had a great battle between 2 of the worlds best riders, Tomasz Gollob and Jason Crump, with the lead changing several times before Gollob took the victory to collect his 17th point from a possible 18 to round off a fantastic evening for himself and his team.
Sunday saw professional rugby league return to Blackpool for the 1st time since Blackpool RLFC went bust, with Bloomfield Road hosting the Northern Rail Cup final between Leigh Centurions and Halifax.
After an even start early tries for each team were wiped off by the video ref, and then Halifax took control of the game and got the 1st score, again with the help of the video ref on 19 minutes when Miles Greenwood went over. Halifax then got a 2nd try and went into the 2nd half with a 10-0 lead.
After a poor 1st half a different Leigh side came out in the 2nd half, and after a good period of domination they got 2 tries to draw the scores level, but Halifax took the lead again when Rob Worrincy went over in the corner on 67 minutes. Leigh then had all the pressure again and drew level with 5 minutes to when Jaime Ellis went over for his 2nd try, and as it was looking certain it was going to go to golden point extra-time Tom Armstrong went over in the last minute for Leigh to take the lead for the 1st time and take the victory.
This was a exciting and great match to watch with end to end action that could have gone either way and was a fantastic advert for non-Super League rugby league.
The main event, and defiantly the highlight of the weekend, was the FIFA Women's World Cup Final between Japan and the USA held at the Commerzbank-Arena in Frankfurt on Sunday night.
The US dominated the attacking play in the 1st half as they easily created good chances, with Megan Rapinoe, Lauren Cheney, Abby Wambach and Carli Lloyd all narrowly missing excellent opportunities. But Japan kept their composure in possession as they held on to the ball quite well, although they didn't create that much in the final 3rd of the pitch.
Eventually the US got the breakthrough, on 68 minutes, with Alex Morgan slotting the ball past the Japanese keeper, Ayumi Kaihori, from the edge of the area after a hopeful through ball, over the top, from Rapinoe. But 10 minutes later Japan were level with Aya Miyami flicking past US keeper, Hope Solo, after the US defence couldn't clear the ball in the area. The Japanese took confidence from this goal and created some more good chances, but neither team could get the winner and the game went to extra-time.
The US look the lead again towards the end of the 1st period of extra-time with Wambach getting her 4th goal of the tournament as she headed in from the edge of the 6 yard area. But the Japanese equalised again, towards the end of the 2nd period, with their captain, and the tournaments best player, Homare Sawa scoring a flick on at the near post, with 3 minutes to go. Then in the dying moments of the game Azusa Iwashimizu was sent off for taking down Lloyd on the edge of the area, but the US couldn't take advantage of the free-kick and the game went to penalties.
The US had an awful penalty shoot-out with Kaihori saving both Boxx's and effort's as well as Lloyd missing as the US failed to convert any of their 1st 3 penalty's, and Japan took a 2 nil lead with Aya Miyama and Mizuho Sakaguchi scoring, and Yuki Nagasato missing. After Wambach scored the US's 1st penalty Japan got the winner with Saki Kumagai blasting the ball into the top left corner.
Realistically USA should have won the game in normal time after the amount of good chances they had, as well as the fact Japan didn't didn't create that many good chances, and although they were unlucky to be pulled up for an offside in the 2nd half when Shinobu Ohno was through on goal, Japan were quite lucky to take the game to penalties.
This has been a great tournament with some exciting and dramatic games and the Japanese deserved their World Cup victory after some fantastic performances throughout the tournament, although they were quite poor against England in the group game.
Also Yorkshire finished their disappointing 20-20 campaign with a victory over Derbyshire to finish 6th in the northern group, and miss out on the quarter-finals.
Recent Results:
Friends Life T20: Derbyshire: 127-7 (20.0 overs)
Yorkshire: 128-2 (18.0 overs)
Yorkshire beat Derbyshire by 8 wickets
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