Compiled by MARY HANNIGAN

Liberia women's title settled on 55-0 score

WHILE THE women’s World Cup is up and running in Germany, the club season in Liberia has just come to an end, Earth Angel completing the double this week, their 2-1 Grand Final victory over Pro Anchor adding the Knock–Out Championship to the Premier League title they won earlier this month. The triumph was sweet in light of allegations by Pro Anchor that they only won the league title, on goal difference, because their final game was fixed. Earth Angel were at a loss to understand why there should have been any suspicion about that victory, it was simply a case of their attack being on form – Amelia Washington scored 23 goals and captain Dehkontee Sayon a paltry 11 in a 55-0 win over Kebeh FC.

Initially the Liberia FA’s emergency committee put an embargo on “all results from the female league”, but they now seem happy to let things lie. “I don’t want to rubbish claims or complaints of match fixing,” said LFA’s Henry Flomo, “but I equally don’t want to give it credence because there have always been an avalanche of goals in the female league.”

There’s no word yet from Kebeh FC’s goalkeeper, but for the good of her self-esteem, you have to hope the match was indeed fixed.

Pigeon race federation homes in on Tour

SPARE A thought for the section of the French population that is busy re-washing shirts, blouses, trousers and the like, all the time flummoxed as to why their clothes lines are being air-bombed from the skies.

Jose de Sousa, the president of the French pigeon fanciers’ federation, has the answer. “With this Tour de France, first and foremost we want people to get to know our sport,” he said when he spoke to the media about the 13-stage pigeon race that is currently in, well, full flight.

The 2,000 km (1,242 mile) race began in Lille on Sunday and if the winds are favourable should be complete by the time the pigeons’ Tour de France cycling counterparts get going on Saturday. If the weather’s against them, though, it could be October by the time they’re done.

So far the birds’ speeds have ranged from 40 km per hour (25 miles per hour) to – with the wind beneath their wings – 120 km/h.

De Sousa is hoping the race will herald the start of a sporting partnership with cycling’s blue riband event, promising to home in on the Tour de France people with a novel suggestion for next year. “We plan to contact the organisers to set up departures at the same time,” he said. As if the Alpe d’Huez wasn’t hard enough to climb without suffering the same fate as those clothes lines.

Woods on hot streak again but here's the rub

TIGER WOODS once had an “endorsement portfolio” worth almost €63 million a year, but while some sponsors, like Nike and Electronic Arts, stood by him after his non-golfing activities were exposed, several others, including Accenture, ATT, Gatorade and Gillette, either dropped him or chose not to renew his contracts. Even his golf bag is still without a sponsor, over a year since his return from exile, his agent Mark Steinberg saying this week he’s in “discussions” with some companies over a possible deal.

While he’s unlikely to run out of money any time soon, it was still probably something of a relief for Woods when his people were able to announce his first endorsement this week since his personal woes were revealed. He has signed a three-year deal to promote a heat rub used to relieve muscle and joint pain – it has not been revealed, though, how much the contract is worth.

“When looking for a person for a new TV commercial we determined that Tiger Woods, with his No 1 accomplishment as a golfer and his overwhelming presence, matches the promotional direction of the products,” said the company in its press release.

The products in question are the not so snappily titled Antiphlogistic Analgetic Vantelin Kowa series, for which he will do television, print and internet ads. But only in Japan. “I look at this as showing he’s a global attraction,” said Steinberg who is, it seems, still waiting for a call from a US company.

Buchanan makes waves over views on Mexican fans

ALARMINGLY ENOUGH, it’s 21 years since Norman Tebbit spoke about his “cricket test”, the phrase used by the former chairman of the Conservative Party to question the loyalties of mainly Asian immigrants in Britain. They could not, he suggested, be truly loyal to Britain if they and their children failed to support the English cricket team against the likes of India and Pakistan.

“A large proportion of Britain’s Asian population fail to pass the cricket test,” he said. “Which side do they cheer for? It’s an interesting test. Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are?”

Tebbit’s “test” came to mind again this week in the aftermath of the Concacaf Gold Cup final between Mexico and the United States in Pasadena, which the Mexicans won 4-2 after being 2-0 down. Among those who didn’t take kindly to the fact only 10,000 or so of the 93,000 crowd supported the home team was Pat Buchanan, the right-wing political commentator who made three unsuccessful attempts in the past to run for the presidency.

Buchanan quoted from the report by the Los Angeles Times’ Bill Plaschke, who wrote: “. . . the US soccer team played for a prestigious championship in a US stadium . . . and was smothered in boos. Its fans were vastly outnumbered. Its goalkeeper was bathed in a chanted obscenity. Even its national anthem was filled with the blowing of air horns and bouncing of beach balls. Most of these hostile visitors didn’t live in another country. Most, in fact, were not visitors at all, many of them being US residents whose lives are here but whose sporting souls remain elsewhere.”

While the notion of “sporting souls remaining elsewhere” might be a familiar one for the Irish sprinkled around the globe, it left Plaschke with mixed feelings, but he concluded that the experience “was messy, mangled and beautiful” and marvelled at the passionate support Mexico enjoyed.

Buchanan, though, was a touch less understanding, taking particular offence at the comment of one Mexican fan quoted in the piece: “I was born in Mexico, and that is where my heart will always be.” “Perhaps he should go back there,” he wrote, “and let someone take his place who wants to become an American.”

He went on to cite the behaviour of some Mexicans at the game as another reason to fear their immigration to America, warning that by 2050 “the number of Hispanics in the USA will rise from today’s 50 million to 135 million”.

“Say goodbye to California,” he added.

California, you’d imagine, will still be there in 2050, but not with a population make-up that will appeal to Buchanan.

Media Matters, the group that keeps an eye on “conservative misinformation in the US media”, as it describes it, responded by describing Buchanan as a “noted bigot”, arguing that “the impolite behaviour of a few thousand people at a soccer match is not an indictment of the broader Mexican-American community. Unless, of course, you don’t like Mexicans in the first place and are just grasping for confirmation of your prejudice.”

They also noted the somewhat differing passions for the game in the two countries. “Mexico treats soccer as a sort of religion whereas Americans tend to regard it with disinterested contempt, which would account for the fan imbalance at last weekend’s game.”

True enough. Indeed, many of those who share Buchanan’s political views tend to have something in common with the Mexicans: they don’t support the American team either. Soccer, they reckon, is the (largely illegal) immigrants’ game. Last summer when the US did well at the World Cup, there wasn’t exactly whooping and cheering on conservative American sites. At Fox News there was a flood of comments describing the team as “mercenaries” made up of immigrants who, as one chap put it, “were conveniently provided with fast citizenship in order for them to able to call themselves Americans – check every player’s name and the time they have been in the US.”

Well, as it proved, 21 of the 23-man squad was born in the US – the other two Benny Feilhaber (born in Brazil, moved to the US when he was six) and Stuart Holden (Scottish born, moved to the US when he was 10).

One of the 21, incidentally, was Tim Howard, the Everton goalkeeper, who was as apoplectic as Buchanan about the post-match ceremony in Pasadena being conducted in Spanish. The final straw, really. “Concacaf should be ashamed of themselves,” said Howard. “I think it was a ****ing disgrace that it was in Spanish. You can bet your ass that if we were in Mexico City, it wouldn’t be all in English.”

Buchanan, whose Scottish, English, German and Irish ancestors were all drawn to the “nation of immigrants”, much as Howard’s Hungarian mother was, could only conclude “soccer teams serve as surrogates for the tribe or nation”.

He’s still struggling with the “sporting souls remaining elsewhere” bit, though, too busy setting a “football test”.

Why Hamilton is no sunshine player

APART FROM being three of baseball’s greats, Cal Ripken, Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle had something else in common: they all had blue eyes. That should, then, be an inspiration for Texas Rangers star Josh Hamilton, but, instead, he’s trying to find a cure for the “impediment”.

Hamilton, a former All Star outfielder, was baffled by the difference in his batting statistics between day and night games. This season he’s hit six home runs at night, but none during the day, while last season, the best of his career, he hit .286 during the day and .384 at night. You’re not alone if you struggle with baseball stats – the gist is: he’s good under the sun, but exceptional once it goes down.

He eventually figured it out – it’s the blue eyes that are the problem. An optometrist who spoke to ESPN backed up the theory. “Because of the lack of pigment in lighter colour eyes – like blue or green, as opposed to brown – you get a lot more unwanted light and that can create glare problems,” said Dr Richard Ison.

“It’s just hard for me to see at the plate in the daytime,” said Hamilton. “You just see a white ball while the sun is shining right off the plate, beaming right up in your face. Guys with blue eyes have a tough time.”

Hamilton is trying out contact lenses during the day to see if they help. “I’ve never worn them but I really would like to see the ball in the daytime, so therefore I’m trying any means possible to do that,” he said. “I actually care, I want to be better and I don’t want to suck in the day.”