The North Queensland Cowboys are delighted to be rated no-hopers against Melbourne Storm for next weekend’s National Rugby League (NRL) grand final, coach Paul Green said yesterday.
The Cowboys pulled off yet another surprise when they stunned the Sydney Roosters 29-16 on Saturday to reach their third grand final in Sydney.
It capped an exhilarating run for North Queensland through the post-season finals series from eighth position with upset wins over defending champions Cronulla Sharks, Parramatta Eels and the Sydney Roosters to reach the season decider on Sunday.
The Cowboys will be facing Craig Bellamy’s formidable Storm, who are strong favorites to claim their third NRL title at their eighth grand final appearance.
“No one has given us a chance and they won’t give us a chance next week,” Green said. “Melbourne deserve to be favorites, they’ve been the best team all year and they have strike players across the park, we have nothing to lose.”
Asked if he believed his side can topple the Storm, Green said: “I think we can. What matters most is what we believe and that is what’s there.”
It has been a fairytale late season charge for the Cowboys, who just squeezed into the top-eight playoffs after losing five of their last six games in the regular season.
They have also reached the grand final without their mercurial Test star Johnathan Thurston and international front-rower Matt Scott, both who have been sidelined through injury.
However, in Thurston’s absence Michael Morgan has stepped up to become an influential team leader at scrumhalf and he had a hand in three of the Cowboys four tries in the win over the Roosters.
“I’ve got nothing more to say to him now, he’s going that good,” Thurston said of Morgan’s man-of-the-match heroics. “That’s one lad I’m extremely proud of. I’ve seen him grow over the last four months and he’s really come of age while I’ve been sitting on the sidelines.”
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