The Queensland Reds broke a seven-year losing streak against bitter rivals the New South Wales Waratahs when they battled their way to a 19-15 Super Rugby win yesterday.
After leading 16-9 at halftime, the Reds had to withstand a second-half onslaught from the Waratahs, before sneaking home by four points to maintain their place at the top of the Super 15 ladder.
The Reds turned in a magnificent second-half defensive effort to deny the visitors a win, somehow keeping their line intact despite the Waratahs having almost 80 percent of possession and field position in the second half.
The Waratahs used their superior scrum to try and batter the home side into submission, but despite looking certain to crack throughout the second half, the Reds hung on grimly for their seventh win in a row, a first in their Super Rugby history.
Queensland had opened the match full of intent and were first on the scoreboard thanks to a Quade Cooper penalty in the eighth minute.
However, two quick penalties to Cooper’s opposite number Kurtley Beale put the Waratahs into the lead.
The visitors suffered a huge blow minutes later when in-form winger Drew Mitchell badly injured his ankle and was carried from the field on a stretcher.
Beale made it 9-3 with another penalty, before a second three-pointer to Cooper narrowed the gap.
The Wallaby flyhalf then produced some of his trademark magic after Beale put the restart out on the full.
From the ensuing scrum, Cooper took the ball 55m out and split the Waratahs defense, before palming off fullback Daniel Halangahu to touch down beside the posts, celebrating with a double backflip to the delight of the 40,000 fans.
He then rubbed salt into the Waratahs’ wounds with a drop-goal in the 40th minute to send the Reds into the break seven points clear.
Beale kicked a fourth penalty soon after the resumption, which signaled a 30-minute period of complete Waratahs domination.
The Waratahs should have scored a number of times, but were held out by some superb Queensland defense and some poor decision-making of their own.
Waratahs captain Phil Waugh turned down numerous kickable penalties, banking on his team’s dominance in the scrum, but they were unable to cross the Reds’ line.
With eight minutes to go, the Waratahs finally opted to take the points on offer when they were awarded a penalty right in front, Beale slotting it home to close the gap to 16-15, but Cooper, who had a mixed game despite his first-half brilliance, closed the match out with a 45m penalty to trigger wild celebrations by the Queensland players.
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