A round-up of today's other stories in brief
Daly may go way of Kournikova
DIVING:Britains Olympic poster boy Tom Daley is in danger of becoming diving's answer to former glamour girl of women's tennis Anna Kournikova, according Britain's performance director Alexei Evangulov.
“It reminds me of the situation in Russia with Kournikova,” said Evangulov. “She looked pretty and made a promising start to her career but the media exposure meant she never got to be the best.”
Smith looks unlikely to fill Munster coaching vacancy
RUGBY:The likelihood of Wayne Smith assuming the reins at Munster looks more remote after New Zealand sources confirmed that their World Cup-winning backs coach is not of a mind to seek alternative employment from his role at the Waikato Chiefs any time soon, writes Gerry Thornley.
While Munster are probably in no rush to finalise a successor until after their Heineken Cup quarter-final in six weeks’ time, at the least, and therefore Smith cannot be ruled out entirely, it is understood their informal enquiries as to Smith’s availability have not been encouraging.
The two-time European champions have already provoked plenty of interest from coaches closer to home. As well as former Irish coach Eddie O’Sullivan, it is understood that the former Irish outhalf and ex-London Irish coach Brian Smith, out of work since the farcical fall-out from England’s World Cup, when players’ criticisms of their backs coach was publicly leaked, has expressed his interest.
Sri Lanka complete stunning chase
CRICKET:Sri Lanka chased down 280 with four balls to spare to clinch a confidence-boosting three-wicket win over Australia in their one-day match in Hobart yesterday and take top spot in the tri-series tournament.
Fired by half-centuries from captain and man-of-the-match Mahela Jayawardene and Dinesh Chandimal, the tourists were ushered to victory by a brilliant cameo from all-rounder Thisara Perera who blasted an unbeaten 21 off 11 balls in the final few overs.
Perera smacked a six and a four in consecutive balls to leave his team needing only three runs from the final over and paceman Nuwan Kulasekara bashed a boundary through the covers to bring up the winning runs.
St Pat's end reign of St Coleman's
GAELIC GAMES: St Pats of Maghera are through to the MacRory Cup final after ending the two-year reign of Hogan Cup champions St Colman's, Newry, with a 0-10 to 0-8 victory at the Morgan Athletic Grounds in Armagh last night.
St Pat’s led by 0-5 to 0-2 at the break. On the restart Niall Hollywood and Conor Murphy exchanged points before a superb score from Conor Convery put Maghera further in front but they were then dealt a blow when they had captain Conor McAtamney sent off for a second yellow card.
Aaron Morgan reduced the deficit from a free before St Colman’s. Ryan Dougan then put the winners four in front but back came Colman’s with points from Morgan and Micheal O’Hare.
SCORERS – St Pat’s: O Hegarty 0-1; R Dougan 0-1; J Kearney 0-1; S O’Hara 0-3; N McNicholl 0-1; C Convery 0-1; C Murphy 0-2. St Coleman’s: M OHare 0-2; A Morgan 0-3; N Hollywood 0-1; P OHagan 0-1; D Noonan 0-1.
Summerhill come good after break
GAELIC GAMES: Summerhill College, Sligo defeated St Gerald's of Castlebar by 2-5 to 1-5 in the Connacht Colleges Senior A semi-final by 2-5 to 1-5 in Ballyhaunis yesterday.
Two second-half goals in a space of five minutes from Summerhill turned the game in their favour.
The Sligo students looked in serious trouble when they 0-5 to 0-1 down at half time. Shane Dolan scored the St Gerard’s goal from the penalty spot after Tom O’Reilly.
The Castlebar students failed to score in the second half.
Seamie Cawley scored Summerhill first goal after 17 minutes of the second half.
Cian Breheny pulled back two more points before the goal arrived to narrow the gap to two points and then came that second goal from defender Conor Kerins to give Summerhill the advantage.
Scorers – Summerhill: C Breheny 0-4, frees; C Kerins 1-0; S Cawley 1-0; S Peyton 0-1. St Gerald’s: S Dolan 1-2, 1-0 penalty; R Carolan 0-2; T O’Reilly 0-1.
Kobayashi up to speed in Spain
MOTOR SPORT: The unpredictable and virtually unreadable nature of Formula One testing continued yesterday when Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi posted the fastest time of the week in Barcelona.
It means over the four days of the second pre-season outing at the Circuit de Catalunya, four different drivers have led the way.
With two of F1’s other lesser lights in Nico Hulkenberg for Force India and Williams’ Pastor Maldonado on top the previous two days, it proves nothing can be confidently assessed of the timesheets.
Although setting a time of one minute 22.312 seconds, more importantly for Sauber, the Japanese driver completed 145 laps — more than two race distances and the equivalent of 420 miles.
With a final test looming at the same track next week before the first race of the season in Australia next month, Kobayashi said: “There’s still a lot of work to do, but we are working in the right direction.”
