Worldwide Sports News
A rampant Luke Littler beat Michael Smith and Luke Humphries to become the youngest major winner in darts history
Littler 3-1 Smith No nine-darter – he managed seven perfect darts before missing T19 – but more importantly he has broken Smith already. He pinged his bestie D10 to complete a 12-darter, and now Smith is effectively two breaks behind.
Littler is six darts into a nine on the Smith throw…
Continue reading...A South African schoolboy rugby player has gone viral after he carried his opponent 20m backwards in wild scenes during a recent match.
Waratahs coach Darren Coleman was given credit for navigating “three challenging seasons” but won’t get a fourth after the battling Super Rugby outfit confirmed he wouldn’t be offered a new contract.
Before entering business, O’Reilly played rugby for Ireland and the Lions and could have been ‘one of the world’s greats’
Tony O’Reilly has died aged 88 and this week’s business pages will pay tribute to a titan of the corporate world who struck commercial gold with Kerrygold and built a hill of beans with Heinz. It is a sign of a life remarkably well lived, then, that his name will also always have a place in the pantheon of Irish sporting heroes and prompt a wry smile whenever rugby union’s classic old-school anecdotes are retold.
As a player good enough to have been selected as the youngest Lion in history when chosen to tour South Africa as a teenager in 1955, O’Reilly might have reached even loftier heights in the game had his burgeoning business career not intervened at the age of 26. There was to be one last impromptu hurrah, however, when he was famously recalled seven years later to face England at Twickenham.
Continue reading...A tearful Michael Smith put friendship aside to win his Premier League shootout with Nathan Aspinall and qualify for next week’s playoffs at the O2 Arena.
The 2023 world champion beat his good friend Aspinall 6-3 in the quarter-final of the final round of the league phase in Sheffield to join Luke Littler, Luke Humphries and Michael van Gerwen in London.
Continue reading...Jorge Martín of Pramac Racing, the MotoGP championship leader, won the French Grand Prix on Sunday to complete a weekend double while Gresini Ducati’s Marc Márquez finished second with a final-lap overtake of Francesco Bagnaia, the reigning champion, at Le Mans.
Bagnaia led for most of the race before Martín, having started on pole, regained the lead and powered to victory following an intense battle while Márquez, who started 13th on the grid, and finished on the podium once again after Saturday’s sprint.
Continue reading...Have you been following the big stories in football, boxing, diving, snooker, rugby, cricket and motor racing?
Continue reading...Teenage darts sensation Luke Littler is to make his debut in Australia when he headlines the country’s biggest event in Wollongong in August.
The 17-year-old English phenomenon, who has flourished as the sport’s biggest attraction since becoming the youngest ever world championship finalist at 16 in January, will feature in a star-studded line-up at the Australian Darts Masters in August.
Continue reading...The experiences of the world’s leading players are key to understanding snooker’s current unpredictability
Ostensibly, sport aims to answer one question: who is the best? Humans being humans, we naturally invest it with meaning beyond that – the teams we support are ours forever, a fixed part of our identity representing values and a way of life. We keep coming back because we have no choice.
Individual sports, though, are different, players necessarily transient, so what keeps us coming back is the competition itself. And for that reason, there is greater onus on it to provide a satisfying outcome: we want our world championships won by the best player in the world, and Kyren Wilson, snooker’s newly minted king – a terrific talent and worthy winner – is, on the face of it, no such thing.
Continue reading...Jak Jones sealed his shock World Snooker Championship final place by beating Stuart Bingham 17-12 – and branded his beaten opponents “pathetic” for complaining about his playing style.
The world No 44 will face Kyren Wilson in the two-day final starting on Sunday after Wilson overcame David Gilbert 17-11. Both Bingham and Judd Trump, whom the Welshman beat in the last eight, implied that Jones’ frustrating tactics had affected their rhythm and ultimately contributed to their defeats.
Continue reading...Kyren Wilson needs three more frames to reach a second World Snooker Championship final after opening up a 14-10 lead over David Gilbert. The pair were tied at 8-8 after the morning session but Wilson, the only seed left, won six of the eight frames in the evening to take a commanding lead.
It would have been virtually game over had Gilbert not won the final frame with a break of 101, but he goes into Saturday’s final session as a big underdog, with the winner to face Stuart Bingham or Jak Jones, who are locked together at 8-8.
Continue reading...The Scotland back couldn’t be happier after switch to French club who face Harlequins in a Champions Cup semi-final
It’s been five months since Blair Kinghorn decided to move from Edinburgh to Toulouse mid-season. He’s played 10 games and won every one of them. Toulouse are second in the Top 14, two points off Stade Français, and have a home semi-final against Harlequins in the Champions Cup on Sunday.
Kinghorn has scored six tries and eanred himself a spot in a freewheeling backline that includes Antoine Dupont, Romain Ntamack, and Thomas Ramos. He’s been playing in front of a 20,000 home crowd every other week. And he and his fiancee are settled into their new house, next door to his friend and teammate Jack Willis.
Continue reading...A world championship move away from its storied home would have implications in south Yorkshire beyond snooker
Picture the scene. There is live sport on a big screen, and on the artificial grass deckchairs are laid out, with pints of lager flowing. It sounds like a scene from continental Europe during a major football tournament: but this is Sheffield city centre on a grey, murky Friday morning.
It is perhaps fitting that Tudor Square, the part of Sheffield where the Crucible Theatre is situated, is dubbed the “Heart of the City” on the tourist information around town. Because for two weeks every year, snooker and its most iconic venue is at the beating heart of Sheffield – for now, at least.
Continue reading...Have you been following the big stories in football, cricket, snooker, rugby union, baseball, cycling and golf?
Continue reading...Could the Gold Coast Titans be considering handing out-of-contract utility Josh Schuster an NRL lifeline?