SOCCER
Coaches to be carded
Referees will be encouraged to issue red and yellow cards to misbehaving coaches and team officials during a trial in Australia’s top-flight men’s and women’s leagues. Football Federation Australia yesterday said the leagues would be the first top-tier domestic competitions to receive approval from the International Football Association Board to conduct the trial, starting on Friday. The use of the red and yellow cards will allow spectators to see when cautions and ejections have been imposed — just as they do when players are sanctioned on the field. Coaches and staff risk being sent from the field for repeated infringements including kicking or throwing water bottles, delaying the restart of the game or for using offensive language or gestures.
SOCCER
Fans banned for urine throw
Tottenham Hotspur have issued life bans to two supporters who threw urine at away fans during the 3-2 defeat to West Ham United on Wednesday last week. After West Ham’s victory, a video circulated on social media showing a Spurs fan urinating into a glass before another threw it at the away supporters. “This kind of behavior is not acceptable and we shall be issuing lifetime bans to both individuals in the video,” a Tottenham spokesman told Sky Sports.
SOCCER
HKFA warned over booing
The Hong Kong Football Association (HKFA) was warned yesterday by the Asian Football Confederation over the conduct of fans who booed the Chinese national anthem last month. A small section of supporters jeered during the playing of the March of the Volunteers and turned their backs on the Chinese flag ahead of a 2-0 win for Hong Kong over Malaysia at Hong Kong Stadium in qualifying for the Asian Cup finals. The confederation’s disciplinary committee said in a statement that “a repeat violation may result in more severe punishment.”
GOLF
Woods to compete again
Tiger Woods is returning to competition at his holiday tournament in the Bahamas the week after Thanksgiving. Woods has not played since he withdrew from the Dubai Desert Classic on Feb. 3 with back spasms. Two months later, he had his fourth back surgery in just more than two years. Woods will be part of the 18-person field at the Hero World Challenge, which starts Nov. 30 at Albany Golf Club. A year ago, Woods returned at this tournament after 15 months recovering from two back surgeries. He made 24 birdies, but finished 15th out of 18.
SOCCER
‘Worst team’ celebrates loss
Fans of the self-proclaimed “world’s worst team” celebrated on Monday after their team was eliminated from a soccer tournament in Brazil. Ibis lost 3-2 on aggregate to Decisao in the second division of the Pernambuco state championship, blocking what could have been the team’s first promotion in decades.
Fans rallied over the past two months to keep the club’s losing traditions, and on Sunday, fans celebrated after a 2-0 first-leg victory was squandered at Decisao in a 3-0 loss. Mauro Shampoo, who calls himself the club’s worst ever player, said he expects to get his Ibis-decorated bicycle back from fans that supposedly stole it in protest against the winning streak.
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