ENGLAND
Jail term too lenient: Leeds
A 16-week jail term handed out to a Leeds United fan on Monday for attacking former England goalkeeper Chris Kirkland in a match against Sheffield Wednesday was too lenient, Leeds has said. Aaron Cawley, 21, from Cheltenham, pleaded guilty at Sheffield Magistrates’ Court to assault and invading the pitch during the game at Hillsborough on Friday. Wednesday ’keeper Kirkland was pushed in the face by Cawley and shoved to the ground moments after conceding an equalizer in the 76th minute. After treatment he was able to continue for the remainder of the game. “While we are pleased to see justice brought so quickly, our one disappointment is that we feel the sentence could, and should, have been considerably longer,” Leeds said in a statement on their Web site. Cawley was given a five-year soccer banning order by the court and Leeds said he would be banned for life from attending home games.
SCOTLAND
SPL warns Hearts on wages
Hearts on Monday received a warning from the Scottish Premier League (SPL) over their failure to pay their players’ wages in September, but face another hearing about a similar offence today. Hearts, who were late paying players four times last season, on Monday paid outstanding wages dating from Oct. 15. The Edinburgh-based club later issued a statement that read: “We accept the result of today’s SPL board sub-committee hearing and are satisfied that this specific matter is now resolved and closed. We also acknowledge the second charge against the club, the subject matter of which the club believes has been resolved internally. However, the club notes that this will be dealt with separately on Wednesday.”
GREECE
Hard-up team takes bus
Greece’s financial crisis has forced cash-strapped teams to be more conservative when travelling, with top-flight club Veria making an 800km trip by bus to play their weekend away match. The northern Greek team traveled by bus to southern Tripolis on Sunday to play league rivals Asteras and they also avoided staying at a hotel overnight by returning straight after the match. That meant leaving early in the morning for the eight-and-a-half-hour drive to reach Tripolis, losing the match to Asteras 3-0 and then getting back on the bus for the return trip, a total of 17 hours in transit. The team arrived back at their home base at 5am on Monday morning. Asteras are fourth after seven matches with 13 points while Veria are tied for seventh place with eight points, with undefeated Olympiakos top with 21 points.
FRANCE
Troyes coach extends deal
ES Troyes AC coach Jean-Marc Furlan extended his contract with the Ligue 1 strugglers on Monday which sees him contracted to the club until 2017. The 54-year-old — who was already on a four-year contract — signed the extension the day after the northern French side had climbed off the bottom of Ligue 1 with a shock 1-0 win over previous table toppers Marseille. Furlan has guided Troyes twice into the top flight, the first time in 2005 before he left the club in 2007 and then last season. In between he had spells at RC Strasbourg and FC Nantes. Troyes are second from bottom after nine matches with just five points.
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