Leinster powered into the Heineken Cup quarter-finals with an emphatic 36-3 win over 14-man Ospreys in Pool 1 on Friday, while group rivals Northampton secured second place with a 13-3 victory over Castres.
English club Northampton must wait until all six groups are completed today to find out if they will also go through to the last eight.
The six pool winners qualify for the quarter-finals along with the two best runners-up.
Photo: AFP
Two penalty tries and touchdowns from Cian Healy, Jordi Murphy and Issac Boss helped Leinster cruise past Ospreys in Dublin to finish top of the group with 22 points from six matches.
Flyhalf Jimmy Gopperth booted four conversions and a penalty for the Irish side with Dan Biggar replying with a penalty for the Welsh visitors.
Ospreys had lock Ian Evans sent off for stamping in the 20th minute, a dismissal that threatens his place in Wales’ Six Nations title defense.
The Welsh launch their campaign against Italy on Feb. 1 and Evans could be suspended for several weeks for stamping on Mike McCarthy in a ruck.
A try by George Pisi and two penalties from Stephen Myler led Northampton past Castres on a rain-drenched Franklin’s Gardens pitch. The French team replied with a Rory Kockott penalty.
Northampton have 17 points from their six pool games ahead of Castres with nine and Ospreys on five.
Taiwanese tennis veteran Hsieh Su-wei (謝淑薇) and her Latvian partner Jelena Ostapenko finished runners-up in the Wimbledon women's doubles final yesterday, losing 6-3, 2-6, 4-6. The three-set match against Veronika Kudermetova of Russia and Elise Mertens of Belgium lasted two hours and 23 minutes. The loss denied 39-year-old Hsieh a chance to claim her 10th Grand Slam title. Although the Taiwanese-Latvian duo trailed 1-3 in the opening set, they rallied with two service breaks to take it 6-3. In the second set, Mertens and Kudermetova raced to a 5-1 lead and wrapped it up 6-2 to even the match. In the final set, Hsieh and
Taiwanese tennis veteran Hsieh Su-wei and her Latvian partner, Jelena Ostapenko, advanced to the Wimbledon women’s doubles final on Friday, defeating top seeds Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic and Taylor Townsend of the US in straight sets. The fourth-seeded duo bounced back quickly after losing their opening service game, capitalizing on frequent unforced errors by their opponents to take the first set 7-5. Maintaining their momentum in the second set, Hsieh and Ostapenko broke serve early and held their lead to close out the match 6-4. They are set to face the eighth-seeded pair of Veronika Kudermetova of Russia and Elise Mertens
Outside Anfield, the red sea of tributes to Diogo Jota and his brother, Andre Silva, has continued to grow this week, along with questions over whether Liverpool could play at Preston today, their first game since the brothers’ tragic loss. Inside Anfield, and specifically a grieving Liverpool dressing room, there was no major debate over the pre-season friendly. The English Premier League champions intend to honor their teammate in the best way they know how. It would be only 10 days since the deaths of Jota and Silva when Liverpool appear at Deepdale Stadium for what is certain to be a hugely
ON A KNEE: In the MLB’s equivalent of soccer’s penalty-kicks shoot-out, the game was decided by three batters from each side taking three swings each off coaches Kyle Schwarber was nervous. He had played in Game 7 of the MLB World Series and homered for the US in the World Baseball Classic (WBC), but he had never walked up to the plate in an All-Star Game swing-off. No one had. “That’s kind of like the baseball version of a shoot-out,” Schwarber said after homering on all three of his swings, going down to his left knee on the final one, to overcome a two-homer deficit. That held up when Jonathan Aranda fell short on the American League’s final three swings, giving the National League a 4-3 swing-off win after
RSS