Ulster claimed their second win in two European Cup outings this season with a gritty 19-8 win at Glasgow, while fellow former champions Northampton slumped to a 21-16 defeat at Castres.
Ulster, who had crushed Castres 41-17 in their opening Pool 4 match in Belfast last weekend, had led 6-3 at half-time thanks to two penalties from Paddy Jackson.
Back row forward Chris Henry extended their lead with their only try of the game after 68 minutes with Jackson adding the extras for 13-6.
Photo: AFP
Jackson added two more penalties to give 1999 champions Ulster a cushion which made Glasgow’s last minute try from Fijian replacement scrum-half Nikola Matawalu a mere consolation.
“It’s not easy to come here and get a victory as other teams I’m sure will find out,” Ulster head coach Mark Anscombe said. “We showed a lot of character, the boys battled their way through tough conditions against a very good team. You have got to be able to work through things because the game of rugby doesn’t always go the way you want it.”
Northampton, the 2000 champions, had clawed back a 15-point deficit to emerge 24-15 victors over Glasgow last week, but were outclassed by a Castres team eager to bounce back from their disastrous trip to Northern Ireland.
Castres took just six minutes to open their account when center Paul Bonnefond crossed and Romain Teulet added the conversion.
Seven minutes later, Northampton were penalized for offside and Teulet slotted over the penalty for a 10-0 lead.
Steve Myler was on target with two quick penalties as Saints cut the deficit to 10-6.
However, seven minutes from the break, lock Courtney Lawes was penalized for not rolling away and South African scrumhalf Rory Kockott made the Englishman pay with a penalty that gave Castres a 13-6 lead.
Five minutes after the interval, a scrum was reset five meters out from Northampton’s line. The ball came out to Antonie Claassen and the South African back-rower charged over for an 18-6 lead for the French side, although Kockott went wide with the conversion.
On the hour mark, Samoan center George Pisi, who was man of the match against Glasgow, brought Northampton back into the game.
He chased down a Ryan Lamb kick ahead, Kockott fumbled the ball which allowed Pisi to regather before scoring under the posts.
Myler converted for 18-13, before a cool-headed drop goal from Teulet settled Castres’ nerves at 21-13.
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