Ronan O'Gara, who plays with Cork Constitution against Young Munster in today's AIL semi-finals, may take some cold comfort from the fact that he is the third highest points scorer in the European Cup while team-mate Anthony Horgan, who will not be playing today because of injury, is joint third in the try-scoring rankings. O'Gara, on 127 points, trails Leicester's Tim Stimpson on 133 points and the Argentine Diego Dominguez from Stade Francais on 158.
Horgan is in a cluster of five players who have each scored five tries with Swansea's Matthew Robinson leading on nine and Franck Comba from Stade on seven. The only other Irish player in the shake up is Ulster's David Humphreys, who has kicked 96 points and is ninth in the listings.
IOC get in on the television game
Olympic chiefs will set up a broadcasting company to produce television coverage at the summer and winter Games from 2008. The company, to be called Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), will be a private concern with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) taking an 80 per cent share.
Twenty per cent will be owned by the firm run by Olympic TV consultant Manolo Romero, IOC officials said on Wednesday. The goal is to keep all the television experts together from each Games rather than having to set up a host broadcaster with different officials at every Games.
"The idea is to set up a team of very high quality people who are permanently employed by the corporation," IOC director general Francois Carrard said.
The company will be ready to start work on the 2008 summer Games, the venue of which will be decided in July. The next summer Games in Athens in 2004 and winter Games in Salt Lake City in 2002 and Turin in 2006 will operate under the old system.
O'Driscoll's lions' share of injuries
Blackrock and Ireland centre Brian O'Driscoll looks likely to be an automatic choice for one of the Lions' centre spots as long as he can put an injury-dogged 12 months behind him. Two hamstring tears and a partial shoulder dislocation, allied to Ireland's truncated fixture list because of the foot-and-mouth outbreak and an abbreviated European campaign when the province failed to reach the knockout stages of the European Cup, has meant O'Driscoll has played only 17 games this season. That is less than half as many as some of the England players in the Lions squad.
BBC gamble on boxing long shot
Thirty-year-old Audley Harrison's attempts at making the transition from Olympic gold medallist to heavyweight champion over 10 professional fights is quite a prospect. So desperate are the BBC for a British boxing hero they've invested £3 million into what experts see as a hopelessly long-shot project. And we accuse RTE of making odd decisions.
SportsSpeak: The week in quotes
"You know me, I never know how I'm going to play from one tournament to the next." - It has to be golfer Darren Clarke speaking in Heidleberg before this week's PGA event began.
"Was it a great game? Was it a bad game? Who knows?" - Soccer pundit Johnny Giles being unusually vague about Liverpool's UEFA Cup win against Alaves mid week.
