It’s only the quarter finals of the World Snooker Championships but history has already been made.  With both Ronnie O’Sullivan and Ali Carter finding tremendous form to make 147 maximum breaks this is the first time there has been two 147 breaks in the same ranking tournament.  They will now collect and share the £147,000 bonus for a maximum and £10,000 for the highest break of the tournament.  After making his 147 in an incredible 8 minutes and 47 seconds O’Sullivan said “That money gives me a few options in the summer.  I’ll be getting a Bentley convertible now – I’ve been dying to get one!”

In many ways this situation perfectly sums up O’Sullivan’s performance throughout this tournament.  A true genius of the game, Ronnie has effortlessly glided through the rounds, picking off opponents with ease.   Looking equally strong is seven-time Crucible champion Steven Hendry, who after several years in the wilderness seems to have refound his form, reaching the semi-finals for the first time since 2004.  Hendry is due to take on O’Sullivan for a place in the final and in the other semi-final match Ali Carter will take on Joe Perry.
    
If you are into betting then the smart money would still be on O’Sullivan, with Blue Square offering odds on Ronnie winning the championship at 7/2.  Carter and Perry are joint second favourites at 7/1, while Hendry is the outside bet at 33/1.  Incidentally, the odds on Ronnie scoring another 147 maximum break, and breaking yet another snooker record, have been slashed to 10/1.

O’Sullivan has faced a lot of criticism about his commitment to the sport and he himself has often speculated about early retirement (even saying that he planned to leave snooker to become a professional marathon runner at one point).  However, his apparent disillusionment with the game off the table has not affected his performances and in every match he has looked focused and disciplined.  

Hendry’s appearances so far also suggest a man reenergised by the game.  His triumph over Ryan Day for a place in the semis was classic Hendry and he has eased his way through to the last four.  At 39 however, many people think that Hendry’s best days are behind him and the seven times world champion has not had victory on the world stage since 1999.  Carter and Perry have had limited success at the world championships.  Neither of them have made it passed the last eight, and faced by the awesome skill of O’Sullivan would struggle to rise to the occasion of a Crucible final.  However, Carter’s stunning 147 maximum break may be just the motivation he needs to pull out two more career defining performances and take the title.

The police statement states that ‘a 59-year-old man and a 39-year-old woman were today arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and false accounting, as part of the City of London Police's ongoing investigation into football corruption.’

This was a fairly innocuous and typically noncommittal statement from the Economic Crime Unit, but it is nevertheless one that confirms the startling news that Karren Brady, the most influential female administrator in the Premier League, and David Sullivan, (the managing director and co-owner of Birmingham City) have been arrested and bailed on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and false accounting.

Brady became the UK's youngest managing director when Birmingham City floated on the stock market in 1997. She is non-executive director of Channel 4, Mothercare and Sport England and is also chairman of Kerrang Radio. Sullivan, the multi-millionaire former proprietor of the Daily Sport and Sunday Sport, co-owns Birmingham City with brothers David and Ralph Gold.

Following their arrest shares in Birmingham City were suspended on the London Stock Exchange ‘pending an announcement’, after the news the two had been interviewed by police got out.

A statement issued by the London Stock Exchange stated: ‘At the request of the company trading on Aim for the under-mentioned securities has been temporarily suspended from 10/04/2008 7.30am, pending an announcement.’

Shares in the company had been selling for 35.5p until the suspension announcement which came half an hour before the start of trading.

The personal involvement in the inquiry of Brady and Sullivan has come as a great shock as Birmingham have not been particularly under the spotlight during the long-running inquiries that have seen the arrests of the likes of Harry Redknapp, Peter Storrie and the  Senegalese player Amdy Faye who is currently on loan at Rangers from Charlton.

When pressed, the police gave little further information, stating only that the two had ‘been released on bail’ and that ‘seven other people remain on bail in connection with the investigation.’

There has been absolutely no sign of Sullivan at his mansion in Essex and Brady made no comment as she left her home in Solihull this morning.

Two Italian clubs have apparently accused Premier League teams of stealing the products from their youth system at the age when they are eligible to sign their first professional contracts.

This is nothing new, Arsenal have a history of signing some of the best talent throughout Europe at a young age. Fabregas (right, with Denilson), Flamini, and Clichy are all youngsters signed from foreign lands for minimal prices at incredibly young ages, they were then brought through the Arsenal youth system, which functioned more as a finishing school, and given the opportunity to play first team football. It is a system that has been adopted by both Manchester United and Liverpool though neither have yet experienced the success of Wenger.

For the clubs the situation is not exactly desirable. Signing foreign talent is cheap, certainly, cheaper than signing British players, but the orientation process is a lot slower and the success rate is relatively low, those that fail to make it disappear into the system.

The reason that they do it is quite simply technique. Young, foreign players are trained from a young age with a football, the focus is put on technical ability. When they come to our academies they learn to deal with the British type of physical, rapid football, and when they develop on the physical side, they retain the technique that is so desired. British players, save for a few notable exceptions, are not developed in the same way and don’t come out of the system with the same type of talent. Whether this is due to the academy system, or the end of that long tradition of children playing on the street or any other reason can’t really be known, but the fact is that a premium is placed on technique now, and young foreigners have it in abundance.

So what is the solution? The much talked about development in British coaching programmes? A change in the way training is conducted at grass roots level? Quite probably, but this will take a while for the results to be felt, and in the mean time top European talent will continue to be poached by top British clubs.

The US master is coming next week and sports betting enthusiasts are eagerly wondering if anyone will mount a serious enough challenge to stop Tiger Woods from taking a fifth green jacket away from Augusta this year. The almost unstoppable Woods is looking to grab all for majors this year and it would be a brave online betting fan who would bet against this happening. There’s no shortage of those though and golf, being the game that it is, can cause many a brilliant player to have a shaky period where nothing seems to go right.

There’s also no shortage of players ready to cash in if Woods falters and players such as Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson will be high on people’s lists in such an event. Mickelson is second favourite at 9/1 with most bookies, and his steady hand and temperament have already led to a win in the Northern Trust Open. This must be a good bet and reflects perhaps a little too much belief in the Tiger’s infallibility.

My own favourite, Ernie Els is available at around 16/1 with sports betting site Blue Square and they are throwing in a free £5 bet too, also a good price, and with his recent return to form, may well produce a surprise. Australian, Adam Scott, ranked fifth in the world, is being touted as successor to Greg Norman though one hopes he won’t buckle under the strain as the Great White once did on the back nine against Faldo.

Padraig Harrington is a great guy and will surely don the jacket one day. This may the year for him and, at 25/1 will attract a lot of support. South African, Retief Goosen is right in form and will figure large on the leader board. At 28/1 from Sportingbet.com you could do worse. And let’s not forget Geoff Ogilvey who just won the WGC-CA Championship. He’s at 33/1 and that’s got to be a good bet because, now who did he just beat into second place? Oh yes, that’s right, a Mr T. Woods!

The US Masters was first played in 1934 and its home site, the Augusta National is a very tough golf course indeed. Extended over the years to limit the impact of new equipment and balls on its level of difficulty, the course offers one of the hardest challenges in golf. This is not least because of the state of the greens and the almost impossible pin positioning. The greens are cut to such an extent that you’ve only got to look at your ball and it rolls a mile. A good shot to a yard from the pin can turn into a nightmare as your ball rolls gently back forty yards into the water. Only the best can dominate here and it’s all about the approach shot and the ideal positioning of the ball on the green.

The course features the famous Amen Corner comprising the 11th, 12th, and 13th holes on the course. These holes are hugely hard to play and water often kills a leading players hopes. It’s well known that the tournament is usually decided on the back nine on the final day and Amen Corner is partly responsible for this. Sports betting fans should not count their chickens before their man has shown he can handle the pressure from this.

It’s a fantastic tournament to watch and is fully covered on the TV. Why not give yourself a treat and sit down for four days with your laptop and enjoy the live betting on offer while you sip your cocktail and marvel at the beauty of this great course.

All odds taken from Blue Square Online Betting

Sports betting fans must be wondering what’s happening in the world of cricket with the formation of two new Twenty20 leagues by the Indian Cricket League (ICL) and the Indian Premier League (IPL) in India. These competitions are attracting huge interest from online betting sites in this country and cricket fans in India and making lots of money for the cricketing authorities there from the sale of television and marketing rights.

From all this they are able to offer cricketers from all over the world large amounts of money for relatively short amounts of time spent on the field. Our own County Cricket people are wondering what the future holds after Dimitri Mascarenhas, the Hampshire player, signed for the IPL for £50,000. He will miss a few games for his county but his county has been compensated and all parties report that they are happy with the affair.

The real problem is the potential threat to test cricket that these new kinds of competition bring. Cricketing Boards across the world are beginning to devise sanctions to try to stem the tide of cricketers signing up for these leagues. One such sanction is to bar a player from playing for his country for a year or two. This will inevitably make some players think twice but the rewards are difficult to turn down and many will crack under the temptation. Ricky Ponting, the Australian captain, and a number of fellow team mates, have signed up for the IPL, and Ponting gets it right when he wonders where it will all lead. The limited playing time of 44 days in the Indian season means players can spend more time with their families and avoid the arduous and endless travelling and months away from home that test cricket normally demands.

Enthusiasts of sports betting will probably think that change might now be a bad thing with County Cricket hardly presenting the most exciting kind of cricket. There’s definitely a move towards the shorter, sharper game and One Day matches or Twenty20 are attracting younger audiences drawn by the speed of action and the excitement generated in these hard fought games. Betting opportunities on sites such as Blue Square and Ladbrokes are more and varied and you get the result today rather than next week. Doubtless we will see the advent of more and more competitions like this in our own country. The trouble is that here we don’t have the fanatical support from such a large number of fans as exists in India and it will be hard to compete financially.

The problem to be solved, however, is that test cricket is the basis of all cricketing expertise. The demands of the game in this form, are behind the honing of the rare talents of these players, now so in demand for the fun side of the sport. Without test cricket there will be no players and this explains the panic now gripping the worlds cricketing authorities. A new era demands a new approach and world cricket must seize the moment if the sport is to survive.  

When FIFA awarded the 2010 World Cup to South Africa there were a number of eyebrows raised. The decision made political sense, and from FIFA’s point of view will continue the spread of the game, but South Africa is hardly the well-organised, stable nation in which to hold the competition that bills itself as the greatest show on earth.

It has come to light that FIFA have built themselves a contingency fund in the event of things going wrong. Some of the stadiums that are in line to be used are very old, run-down, rugby stadiums that need massive investment to improve them and the fear is that these will not be made ready on time.

FIFA, it seems, has been forced to build it’s own £400m contingency fund as insurers are currently uncertain about providing the collateral themselves as building progress continues to be slow. Munich Re, the insurers of the last World Cup in Germany stated the stadiums were the main concern. A FIFA insider, however, suggested that questions over the political stability of the country, security and the transport infrastructure were also a large part of insurance companies’ concerns.

This has been building for some time, a press release by the FIFA executive committee last month revealed the plan to build an $800m reserve capital supply by the end of 2010. All future competitions will have to demonstrate that they have insurance cover at the time of their bid submission.

For all FIFA’s efforts to save guard their flagship event, the damage to world football should South Africa not be ready is far in excess of the $800m that FIFA are building as a contingency. Aside from speeding building work along there is nothing that can be done by the world governing body apart from sitting, watching and waiting.

 

 
The 2008 golf season is well under way with Tiger Woods dominating the field as never before. Woods has won his last seven tournaments and all but one of the last ten where he came second. Never have his chances of a grand slam looked so good and the smart money is moving his way. Sports betting fans will be aware that he has won four green jackets at the Augusta Masters, the first of the majors, and that he loves to play in Britain on the classic Open Championship courses.

Royal Birkdale is the venue for this year’s event and he regards the course as one of his favourites. The US Open is at Torrey Pines where this year’s Buick was won by Woods and, if he has three majors in the bag by the time he hits Oakland Hills for the USPGA, there will be no stopping the man.

Shrewd online betting fans will recall that Oakland Hills was the venue for the spectacular collapse of the US Ryder Cup team in 2004 and Woods may thus have an even greater resolve to carry sweet memories away from this course. Many online betting sites carry a wide range of bets on his possible accomplishments this year and my own chosen site Blue Square offers all possible combinations of his potential Major wins.

But let’s not ignore the other contenders. Great though Woods is, golf is a mind game and we’re all prone to off days where nothing goes right. Ready to leap in if such a thing occurs is Phil Mickelson, the former amateur champ, who plays second favourite to Tiger at the Masters.

European hopes come in the shape of Lee Westwood, Nick Dougherty, Justin Rose, Sergio Garcia, Niclas Fasth, Henrik Stenson and Colin Montgomery. Montgomery has yet to win a major but, at forty four, he will struggle now in today’s very competitive golf world. Justin Rose is picking up Ryder Cup points here and there and can never be discounted. South African Ernie Els is my own favourite golfer and is in the bookies number three slot for the Masters. Els has a superb temperament and is showing strong signs of a return to form.

There are many tournaments over the forthcoming year and most online betting sites cover them. You can also access sites which offer the latest news and gossip or statistics and analysis of form. Tips abound and also many offers of free bets from betting sites to new customers registering with them. In all cases, registration is an easy matter with just a simple form to fill in and a deposit to be made. Sites such as Free Betting Online will help you to find the right betting site to suit your needs.

The ultimate golf tournament returns later in the year with the Ryder Cup at the Valhalla Course in Louisville, Kentucky. There are a few truly exciting sports events such as the FIFA World Cup or close scoring in the Ashes matches, but it’s hard to beat the Ryder Cup on the final day when the scores are tight. Make sure you have a ringside TV seat and laptop close to hand for this event. Get a few friends round to join in the fun and enjoy one of the truly peak moments in sport.

 

Alongside this week’s announcement of a £200 million initiative to rebuild football in Britain ‘from the grassroots up’, there was also an emphasis placed on the need to respect the position of the referee.

The new chairman of the FA, Lord Triesman, has stated as his expressed intent to ‘persuade people to show proper regard for the officials’.

He believes that in order to successfully tackle the recurring problems at the grassroots level (such as aggressive players or overly pushy parents) they need to be dealt with from the offset, and the only way to achieve this is to have an official who commands enough respect to properly put the matter to rest.

Seeking to demonstrate the interdependency of professional and grassroots football, Triesman said that the only way this was to be achieved was for all referees at all levels to be treated equally and with appropriate deference.

‘It’s harder to get respect at the grassroots if there isn’t any respect for referees at the senior level’, he stated in a recent interview. ‘People in that position are very visible and with that visibility comes great responsibility’.

Lord Triesman will lay out his support for a new system that the FA is currently trialling at a meeting in April. Under this system only the team captains will be allowed to talk to the referee; if a player breaks this rule, his captain will be obligated to intervene or the offender faces a caution and possible expulsion.

If this proposal is met with approval the FA will introduce this new rule from the beginning of next season at county level and if this is successfully implemented some are predicting this rule to work its way up into the premiership.

However, the feasibility of such a move is dubious, with many premier league managers, Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger being prime examples, having been extremely vocal in their criticism of officials this season.

Triesman is quick to reiterate: ‘this is not a war’, but states that ‘the FA is not going to be subordinate to clubs while I’m chairman of it’.

Whether or not Taylor really meant to inflict such injury on Eduardo de Silva is almost impossible to determine. Eduardo, bless him, has actually gone on record saying he didn’t think it was Taylor’s fault, and I highly doubt that Taylor would have gone into the tackle knowing its consequences.

But then again, footballers are not renowned for being the most intelligent of human beings and it could simply have been that Taylor wanted to cause some damage, whatever that damage may have been.

Taylor seems to be genuinely sorry, which is touching, but completely understandable when he finally puts what he has done in the context of his future career. Personally, I don’t know quite what the appropriate punishment is for destroying someone’s leg and probably ending their footballing life is, but only a three match ban doesn’t seem to cover it.

Maybe the fact that forever onwards all Taylor will really be remembered for is that tackle, will be punishment enough. It will haunt him for the remainder of his days as a professional footballer.

Pundits, journalists, fans and commentators alike will just not be able to resist having a quick mention, a little dig at Taylor for what he has done. Snidey comments and malicious abuse will follow him wherever he goes. I highly suspect that some eloquent so and so somewhere has started a chant. I hope he finds a rhyme for “Eduardo”.

This tackle will haunt his legacy for as long as he plays football and beyond. It will, morbidly enough, be the most notable thing in his obituary when he shuffles off as well.

If he honestly didn’t mean it, I feel tremendously sorry for Taylor. The rest of his life has been pretty much laid out by that one ill-advised tackle. I hope Eduardo recovers and returns to the game because at least then Taylor won’t have the guilt of ruining someone else’s life, just causing them serious pain.

I only wish this would stand as an example warning against aggressive tackles, but I really don’t see it working. In the heat of a match a player is not going to overthink a decision if he believes it is in his interest. I can only hope something like this doesn’t happen again for a long long time.

 

David Beckham has been confirmed for the squad playing France on the 26th March though without the captaincy. Beckham will be only the fifth member to join the illustrious and exclusive ‘100 Club’ behind Billy Wright, Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore and Peter Shilton.

Talking yesterday Beckham stated; ‘I am honoured to be talked about in the same company as these men – they are players I have always looked up to. But I want to go beyond that. I want to carry on for a few years’

The journalist Tim Rich has accused Beckham as ‘representing the age of vacuous celebrity’, perhaps with justification, but this is an accolade I am happy to see him reach.

Of all the footballers of the modern age, Beckham is certainly up there. True, he is inconsistent and does not show the same flair as players such as Ronaldo (both of them), but he is the best England player to have been turned out in the past decade.

This may not be the highest of praises, but when one considers that Beckham has outlasted four different managers (and knowing England’s rather cavalier attitude with dispensing them, the fifth is by no means an unattainable challenge) his achievement is cast in a new light.

Who could say what kind of a player he could have become if there was only one manager he served under, one who forged a team where Beckham would not merely show infrequent flashes of brilliance but would be an integral part of a unit that brought out the best of his abilities.

Of course, this is pure speculation and one cannot judge a player on how good he could have been in favourable circumstances, but his longevity in a period of tremendous upheaval and uncertainty in English football is a mark of his skill.

The very fact that Cappello (and the four managers before him) has seen Beckham as worthy of fitting into the new England team is testament to just how highly he is viewed. He is not the best footballer, but he is certainly a fantastic player.

His inclusion in a team bolsters the morale of the other players, makes his opposition wary as they have no idea whether he is going to be useless or tear them apart and it makes the fans very very happy. I believe there can be no higher regard for a footballer than this.