Mick McCarthy insists he can keep Wolverhampton Wandereres in the Premier League next season after his side clinched promotion with a 1-0 win over QPR.
McCarthy’s men have held one of the two Championship automatic promotion places since the third match of the season and they finally crossed the finish line on Saturday to return to the top-flight after a five-year absence.
It was leading scorer Sylvan Ebanks-Blake, a former Manchester United trainee, who got the goal that sent Wolves up in front of a sell-out 27,000 crowd at Molineux.
But having failed to save Sunderland from bottom-of-the-table finishes in 2003 and 2006, McCarthy knows he has a point to prove among the big boys.
“Of course I do, given a sporting chance. If I’m given £6 million [US$8.9 million] to spend like I was last time, which included transfer fees, wages, signing on fees and agents fees then we’ll all be in trouble. But of course that won’t be the case,” he said.
“Last time I think I had a bit of naivety, I also think I had the usual ‘well, if that’s what I’ve got then I’ll do it’ arrogance to think I could,” McCarthy said. “We didn’t get bashed up, we didn’t get a lot of points, but I didn’t really get a chance.”
Ebanks-Blake’s 46th minute winner puts Wolves within touching distance of the league title as well, as they are now six points clear of second-placed Birmingham, with their goal difference 10 better than the Blues.
“I’m not sure I can articulate well enough how I’m feeling,” McCarthy said.
“I’m exhausted, I’m beaming on the inside, I’m absolutely thrilled by our achievements. I’m very proud of the players, they’ve been brilliant all season long.
“It doesn’t register, it doesn’t sink in. It’s not something you can really savor, you just enjoy the high of it for the moment and savor it when I wake up on Sunday,” he said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier