RUGBY LEAGUE
Broncos appoint Rea
Struggling London Broncos sacked head coach Rob Powell on Tuesday and appointed Australian Tony Rea as his successor on a temporary basis until the end of the season. Powell, who at 31 was the youngest head coach in Super League, paid the price for a dismal season for the Londoners, who are bottom of the table with just three wins from their 20 matches. Rea first joined the Broncos in December 1994 and made 47 appearances at hooker before retiring at the end of the first Super League season in 1996 to become chief executive. At the end of the 2000 season he took over as head coach from John Monie and under him the Broncos made the playoffs in 2003 and 2005. Rea’s first game of his second spell in charge will be against Wigan Warriors at the Twickenham Stoop on Saturday.
SOCCER
Wilkinson joins Jeonbuk
Central Coast captain Alex Wilkinson will leave the Mariners to join South Korea’s K-League champions Jeonbuk Motors FC. The A-League team said yesterday the 27-year-old defender agreed to a two-year contract with Jeonbuk following the completion of a transfer deal. Wilkinson played 172 A-League matches for Central Coast over seven seasons, appearing in three grand finals, including the club’s two premiership wins. Wilkinson said he had mixed feelings about the move — “I’ve loved every minute up here ... but there was always a part of me that wanted to play overseas and this offer was in the too-good-to-refuse category.”
SOCCER
Legend Ghiggia recovering
Uruguay soccer legend Alcides Ghiggia says he expects to be released from the hospital this week following a car accident last month that left the 85-year-old in critical condition and fighting for his life. Ghiggia, who scored the winning goal for Uruguay in the 1950 World Cup final to beat Brazil, said on Tuesday in an interview that he expected doctors to let him go home this week.”
SOCCER
Dudelange upset Salzburg
Luxemburg’s FC Dudelange produced a stunning upset in the Champions League qualifiers with a 1-0 home win over Austrian double-winners Salzburg on Tuesday. HJK Helsinki thumped seven goals past hapless visitors KR Reykjavik, with Juho Makela scoring a hat-trick, and Alexander Frei scored twice to give Swiss champions FC Basel a 2-0 win at Flora Tallinn in other second round, first-leg qualifiers. Basel, forced into the qualifying rounds after the Swiss league dropped down UEFA’s complex rankings system, had to wait for the last 30 minutes before securing their win in Estonia. Moldovan champions Sheriff Tiraspol won 1-0 at Armenia’s FC Ulisses in Yerevan. Serbian champions Partizan Belgrade thumped FC Valletta 4-1 away, while Czech side Liberec won 1-0 at home to Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk.
SOCCER
Clark leaves Frankfurt
Bundesliga club Eintracht Frankfurt is parting company with US midfielder Ricardo Clark. Eintracht said late on Tuesday that Clark’s contract was terminated by mutual agreement, effective July 31. The club said in a brief statement that it wishes Clark well for his future, but gave no details of his plans. Eintracht last season sent Clark on loan to Norwegian club Stabaek. Clark signed with Frankfurt in 2010 after leaving Major League Soccer’s Houston Dynamo. Eintracht is returning to the Bundesliga this coming season after a year in the second division.
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