A round up of the week’s sporting stories

Football

International week has seen some positive results for the home nations. With more games to be played within the next few days.

Robbie Keane has again shown what a quality player he is at international level, becoming the all-time leading scorer in European qualifications. Think of some of the other strikers that have played in better teams over the years. Van Basten, Lineker, Voller, Klinsmann etc.

The other major news story is all the revelations from Roy Keane’s book. Personally I won’t be buying it as I think some of it is done just for sales purposes.

Rugby League

  1. Helens beat Wigan to win the Grand Final. The game however was marred by the horrendous act of violence in the 2nd minute by Ben Flower. It was more like a scene from the UFC or a violent drunken attack. The last time something like this happened was in the 1991 FA Cup Final when Gazza was so over aroused coming into the match that he could not control it and was lucky to be stretched off and not sent off after the challenges on Gary Charles.

Ben Flower probably thought he was up for the match and was going to send out a statement, but by not being able to control his aggression and he had high arousal levels which resulted in a poor performance.

Cricket

The ECB and Kevin Pietersen row continues. Again it’s a book which has all the revelations of what the England team was like. For me it’s like listening to primary school children. “He said this and he did this”, “yeah but you said this and then that.” It makes our cricket authorities look like a right laughing stock.

Boxing

Lee Selby has become number 1 contender for the IBF featherweight title. Anthony Joshua won again inside 3 rounds. I just hope that his lack of rounds does not affect him when the opposition can last a bit longer. However if he can really hit hard then most people won’t go past 3 anyway.

F1

Hamilton won the inaugural F1 race in Russia, and in the process equalled Nigel Mansell’s British record for number of wins.

Darts

The final of the World Grand Prix takes place tonight. The double in, double out in Dublin tournament will see MVG take on James Wade in the final.

Across the pond

The Cinderella story that is the Kansas City Royals is still going in the MLB. They lead the Baltimore Orioles 2-0 in the best if 7 series. On the other side the San Francisco Giants hold a 1-0 lead over the St. Louis Cardinals.

The NBA season is underway with the pre-season favourites off to a 2-0 start and defeating the Miami Heat, Lebron’s previous team last night.

Andrew Huddlestone

@ahuddlestone77