What a sporting weekend !! It certainly dished up some Classic encounters….a few brief encounters….a moaning Morinho…. Pardew’s preening Magpies cause more anguish at Anfield….. Dettori does a flyer in California…..F1 frolics in Lone Star State….Rugby thrills and spills….and coming up The Race that stops a Nation……. But first up is a look at a game which does not allow physical contact with your opponents and where players can only use their feet, knee, chest, back and head to touch the ball. It is a hugely popular sport native to South East Asia and is known generally as ‘Sepaktakraw’ , perhaps best described as kick volleyball. Doesn’t sound too exciting really does it ? But over the weekend there was an absolute thriller played out between Malaysia and Thailand in the ISTAF SuperSeries Myanmar 2014-15 final at the Wunna Theikdi Indoor Stadium in Nyapitaw. Malaysia went down narrowly having been on the verge of a historic win in the deciding set when they were leading 20-18 in Sunday’s showpiece. Thailand had been trailing throughout the final set and looked doomed before producing an astonishing finish to clinch an epic victory. A nailbiting thriller for sure…certainly kept me on the edge of my seat, which is more than can be said for some of the other sporting events…. Certainly not a classic Manchester derby match at Ethiad Stadium, as City overcame a 10 men United with Aguero’s 63rd minute winner. City will no doubt be the happier as they keep Chelsea in their sights whilst Van Gaal cannot be happy with his depleted defence and non-firing attack. And he made his view of Smalling perfectly clear. No doubt more choice words were spoken behind closed doors. Chelsea’s Mourinho had a moan or two at Stamford Bridge, was unhappy with the lack of intensity shown by his players and was also critical of the subdued atmosphere inside Stamford Bridge for the West London derby against lowly QPR. Reckon most managers would be quite happy to be 4 points clear in the EPL..... Southampton are keeping the pressure on though and remain just 4 points behind after a handy win at Hull. West Ham extended their unbeaten run to four games after a 2-2 draw at Stoke whilst Spurs West Brom and Arsenal won their games. But up on Tyneside , Newcastles revival under Alan Pardew continued as they picked up a fourth successive victory against a Liverpool side who continue to struggle for form. The Magpies confidence gained from beating Spurs and then Manchester City in the League Cup was visible But it means more anguish at Anfiled, more Balotelli blues and more pressure for Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers: his comment after the Tyneside downfall, Its not working for us at the moment” has got to be one of the understatements of the year…… Bit of a shake up and shakedown weekend in The Championship. Derby were knocked off their perch as they lost 2-1 at mid-table Brentford, and Watford became new leaders moving two points clear with a 3-1 victory over Millwall at Vicarage Road. Bournemouth clambered to second , recording their fifth straight league win as they snatched a 3-2 victory over South Coast rivals Brighton. Middlesbrough jump into third after a dominant 0-3 victory over 10-man Rotherham at the New York Stadium with Derby in fourth. But it’s all very tight as just 3 points separate the top 6 clubs. Bristol City retained their tight hold at the top of League 1 and have moved 5 points clear after ending Oldhams 13-game unbeaten run 1-0. The win extends The Robins unbeaten league run to 21 games. Preston stay second but their eight-match winning run was halted abruptly by a 3-0 defeat at Rochdale who have propelled into fourth behind MK Dons. The Yorkshire derby matches ended with victories for the away teams, Doncaster winning 1-2 at Bradford and Barnsley upsetting League Cup quarter finalists Sheffield United 0-1….. Wycombe Wanderers sank local rivals Oxford United 1-2 to go top of League 2 as Luton dropped to second after surviving a second-half onslaught to earn a point at Exeter City. Shrewsbury move into third after a run of five successive victories but the Shrews 10 men had to fight hard in their 1-2 comeback win at Dagenham. All change North of the Border with Dundee United maintaining their unbeaten record at Tannadice and moving to the top of the Premiership after a 3-0 destruction of St Mirren. Hamilton need a last gasp equaliser to salvage a home point against Partick Thistle and drop to 2nd place ahead of Celtic who defeated Inverness CT 1-0 in the SPL Match of The Day. Going to be close race to the SPL title with lots of battles to be fought. But what greater battle could there be in Scottish Football than a fixture between Old Firm rivals Celtic and Rangers…and the draw for the Scottish League Cup Final has drawn the two teams together with holders Aberdeen meeting Dundee United in the other semi. There have been 399 matches between Rangers (founded 1872 )and Celtic (founded 1887), the first being in 1888, and for the next one there should be a fantastic atmosphere and huge crowds at Hampden Park…… Talking of battles , in 1840 the Texas Rangers had a few run ins with The Commanches (led by Chief Buffalo Hump) most notably at The Battle of Plum Creek, to the south of Austin. Nowadays Austin is the capital of the State of Texas and the venue of F1 USA Grand Prix until 2021. And the’ Austinites’ were out in force, along with worldwide visitors, as over a quarter of a million fans descended on the 192 mile, 56 lap race, around the Circuit of the Americas for another battle in the Hamilton-Rosberg saga. And it was victory for Hamilton as he caught and passed Mercedes team-mate Rosberg on lap 24, powered to his fifth victory in succession, the 10th of the season and extend his lead over Rosberg to 24 points with 75 available in the two remaining races. Ricciardo took third place. With 32 career wins , Hamilton has more career wins than any other Briton, passing Nigel Mansell, and has equalled the tally of his great rival Fernando Alonso. Next stop for the penultimate round is Sap Paulo for The Brazilain GP on 9th November…. But there are rumblings in the background as financial problems beset the sport. Two teams have already collapsed in to administration, others have threatened boycotts and even F1 boss Ecclestone has admitted the escalating financial crisis could lead to reduced grid of 14 cars in 2015. Who’s to blame ? In Bernie’s own words…”There is too much money being distributed badly-probably my fault”….enough said !! It’s almost 1,400 miles to drive from Austin to Arcadia in California but lots of money was up for grabs on the track at Santa Anita. And a big chunk of it went to ‘Bayern’ who just held off the challenge of English challenger ‘Toast of New York’ to win the $5m (£3.13m) Breeders Cup Classic - Americas richest race . But there were more anxious moments before a stewards inquiry confirmed the result. Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner California Chrome was third, having filled that spot for much of the race. The only European-trained winner on Saturdays second day of the Breeders Cup Meeting was the French challenger Karakontie. There was a truly magic moment in the Meeting’s first race on Friday as Frankie Dettori rode ‘Hootenanny’ to a cosy success and after sprinkling the crowd in the winner’s circle with golden asters from the flower garland duly executed one of his trademark flying dismounts…priceless !!! Dettori just missed out on another winner as ‘Bobbys Kitten’ produced a devastating finish to deny ‘No Nay Never’ in a photo. And there were more rich pickings 5000 miles away across the Atlantic at The Northern Ireland Festival of Racing at Down Royal. The 9-2 shot ’ Road To Riches’ put up a most impressive front-running performance to take the JNWine Champion Chase in a class field which included Cheltenham Gold Cup runner-up ‘On His Own’. There was another all- the- way winner in the Powers Irish Whiskey Chase as ‘Don Cossack’ powered clear at the last. And there was another run away shock in store in the opening race as 50-1 shot ‘Scooping’ swooped to scoop winning prize money. In the feature race at Wetherby, the Charlie Hall Chase, 8-1 chance ‘Menorah’ put in a superb display to beat the well fancied favourite ‘Silviniaco Conti’ and is certainly one to note for future races….. There was a runaway performance in Chicago as The All Blacks ran in 12 tries to thrash USA 74-6 in front of a capacity 61,000 crowd at Soldier Field (the oldest NFL Stadium and the home of Chicago Bears). Good warm up for the clash with England next week at Twickers. But at Twickers on Saturday The Wallabies just held on to beat The Barbarians in a thrilling 40-36. Looks like The Autumn Tour could produce some classic encounters…. And there were two classic encounters in Rugby League’s Four Nations Tournament. New Zealand survived a Samoan scare with a late try to snatch a 14-12 victory whilst in Melbourne Australia and England served up an absolute thriller which The Kangeroos just edged finally 16-12. But not without controversy as England had a try claim disallowed in the last minute after the video ref took several minutes to reach his contentious verdict. The decision went against England, so Australia stay in the competition. England play New Zealand next Saturday now knowing that they must secure victory by 10 points to guarantee a place in the final. Another classic encounter coming up…. But in Abu Dhabi it looks like it’s just about all over for Australia as Pakistan maintain their stranglehold on the match. Pakistan declared their 2nd innings at 293-3, setting Australia 603 for victory. With day 4 closing at 143-4 in the mammoth run chase Australia must now bat out the day or score 460 runs. The odds look stacked and Pakistan are within sight of their first Test Series win over The Aussies since 1994… And back to where we started…..sepaktakraw will be one of 20 sports featuring in the upcoming Asian Beach Games which will be held in Phuket 14th-23rd November. Put the date in your diary and go along to watch all the action. The next big sporting event will be on 4th November…tomorrow it’s The Melbourne Cup at Flemington. Watch out for ‘Admire Rakti’, ‘Lucia Velentina” and my each way fancy ‘ Seismos’. Going to be a big race…and once again it will be “The race that stops a Nation”…….
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 05:09:25 +0000
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