All Blacks flyhalf Aaron Cruden helped create, then convert, Charlie Ngatai’s try with 11 minutes remaining to give the defending champion Chiefs a 21-19 win over the Highlanders yesterday.
The Waikato Chiefs came from behind in a match which saw four lead changes to post their second straight win at the start of a season.
The Highlanders were leading 19-14 when flanker Liam Squire split their defensive line with a rampaging run. From the breakdown, Cruden put in a pinpoint cross-field kick which found winger Asaeli Tikoirotuma, who turned the ball infield for Ngatai to score.
Photo: EPA
STORMERS 19, HURRICANES 18
The Stormers squeezed past the Hurricanes with a 77th-minute try from Deon Fourie and a match-winning conversion from Demetri Catrakilis in Super Rugby on Friday.
Flanker Fourie piled over from a rolling maul in the final few minutes to bring the Stormers back from 12-6 down at halftime for their opening win of the season. The Hurricanes slipped to 0-2 after fading in the second 40 at Newlands for their second straight loss in South Africa.
The Hurricanes had struck for two lightning-quick tries in the opening 40 after sucking up some sustained mid-half pressure from the home team.
The first came when All Blacks center Conrad Smith stepped of his left foot and carved through the defense, then fed T.J. Perenara who put in an angled chip kick for left wing Julian Savea to collect and score near the corner.
Hadleigh Parkes set up right wing Cory Jane with another clever kick across the field four minutes later and Jane dived to take the ball and slide over the tryline in one motion for the second of two slick scores.
The Stormers ground their way back, mainly through the boot of flyhalf Catrakilis, who kicked 14 points in all including his winning conversion from outside on the right for a narrow win. Fourie was in among a pack of Stormers forwards who piled over in the 77th to steal victory.
WARATAHS 32, REDS 5
Wallabies fullback Israel Folau followed a first round hat-trick with a second round double as the New South Wales Waratahs beat the Queensland Reds in the Super 15 rugby tournament Saturday.
Winger Peter Betham and center Kurtley Beale also scored tries as New South Wales banked their second four-try bonus point.
FORCE 14, BRUMBIES 27
Scott Fardy, Robbie Coleman and Jesse Mogg scored tries as the Brumbies easily beat the Force.
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