English Premiership club Northampton, European champions in 2000, got this season’s Cup campaign off to a flying start with an 18-14 win over Castres on Friday.
Tries from England back Ben Foden and ex-All Black Bruce Reihana, allied with penalties from Stephen Myler and Shane Geraghty were enough to see off the French outfit, who dominated much of the game and return home with a defensive bonus point.
Joe Tekori crossed the whitewash for Castres, with Pierre Bernard nailing two penalties and Kiwi outside-half Cameron McIntyre kicking a drop-goal.
PHOTO: AFP
Castres’ Scotland international lock Scott Murray said his team’s display was something to be proud of.
“We sometimes were lacking come the final pass,” Murray said. “But we played with lots of passion.”
“The coach asked us to show our hearts and what we were capable of doing,” he said. “It’s sometimes said that French teams don’t play well away, but we proved the opposite.”
Pool 1 rivals Cardiff Blues, winners of last season’s European Challenge Cup, were to play -Edinburgh yesterday.
At Ravenhill, Springbok scrum-half Ruan Pienaar scored a try on his debut in the competition as Ulster sealed a bonus-point 30-6 victory over newly formed Italian outfit Aironi.
Pienaar, who also kicked two penalties, was one of four try scorers for the Irish province along with Andrew Trimble, Ian Humphreys and Simon Danielli.
The Springbok’s five-pointer sealed a satisfying evening’s work for Ulster, earning them a bonus win point ahead of what promises to be a tougher Pool 4 match against Biarritz next weekend.
In Pool 6, which also includes defending champions Toulouse and Wasps, Glasgow ground out a 21-13 win over Newport Gwent Dragons.
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