Oh yea!!! I broke my nose Thursday at Rugby practice! It was actually a pretty good brake. It was a dead on collision and it set itself back into place, so the doc. didn't have to. It should heal up fast as far as nose breaks go.

I don't know, especially for defensive players since Monte Kiffin is there. That guy is a long-time NFL coach and if anyone can prepare them for the league, he can. That and the fact that Orgeron is known as one of the best recruiters in the country should make Tennessee a recruiting force.

That said, Kentucky has picked up it's recruiting in Tennessee and Georgia as well though. Cobb was a huge pick-up for UK last year and Fulmer had decided not to recruit him. He ended up starting at QB for us for 4 games and almost beat Georgia nearly singlehandedly.

UK also recruited a number of guys out of Memphis this year and we seem to have a pipeline in LaGrange high school in Georgia. It'll be pretty interesting to see if we can keep up without Rich Brooks but I really believe the UK staff is one of the best in the country and will remain that way when Joker Philips takes over.

I don't put much stock into the addition of Monte Kiffin to the staff. His resume as a defensive whiz won't sell the program at least in reagrds to luring ball handlers. Not only that but the Tampa defense sure gave him quite a going away present with their late season meltdown of indifference and complacency.

Who plays water polo here? I used to play, im just curious

The Ind - NZ T20 was a good match. Emotionally draining though. Great balling by Harbhajan and Ravindra Jadeja though.

And McCullum is in Kolkata Knight Riders, woohoo..

Pity that guptil discision was absolutly terrible, baxter is lucky we aren't India or he wouldn't have a job

I don't like rugby but I love NFL, it sucks that the season is only 20 weeks long.

An American who plays rugby... I salute you in the greatest possible capacity.

Reds had an away 1-0 over Real Madrid... this makes me a very happy panda.

Well, things are going the Aussies' way in South Africa for now. Marcus North got a century on debut, Johnson blasted 96 n.o (hitting Harris for 26 off of one over to boot), and now the Proteas are 2/5 in the 6th over with Hilfenhaus getting Amla in his first over at international level. Have to say, amazing effort to get to the position they're in after the start they had on day one. Although, if the summer that's just been is anything to go on, we'll find some way of losing our advantage.

Edit: And Kallis just brought up his 10,000th run. What a rad bloke that guy is.

I'm confident South Africa will come back and drub us, as they by all rights should.

Today two of my wrestling team's captains are off to regionals. The first (and far more talented) is wrestling 140, while the other is a very strong 215. If they are able to place in the top four, they'll move on to STATES! My oh my is this exciting!

Agreed, at least with this most recent season. That said, he's a successful NFL coach going to the college level, and the egos aren't quite as bad at the college level. I certainly think he's a better defensive coordinator than pretty much anyone else at this level, and Tennessee already had one of the top defenses in the country last season. That said, I don't want him or Lane Kiffin to succeed. Hopefully UK can move up in the ranks.

Jon Gruden would be a good fit to bring that program up to speed. I can see him as a highly successful college coach for the right program.

Well I knew after the two 400 yd games that Cassel had, that he would be traded, and even more so after the Chiefs got Pioli but for pick 34????

I'm very surprised that KC only had to give up a second round pick for Vrabel AND Cassell. Talk about hooking up Pioli. But in way, it does make sense because the Pats unload Matt's huge franchise salary from their cap. But still they threw in Mike Vrabel too for only a second rounder. Matt Cassel put up almost identical numbers as Tom Brady's first year as a starter. He still could end up being another Derek Anderson though since we've only seen him for one year in a very talented system. But I do not think that will end up being the case because the Chiefs will be vastly improved and they have a brilliant offensive mind as a head coach and the team is going to have a hell of a draft.
I would have thought Seattle would have been a better landing place for a Cassell trade before this deal went down but its a good deal.

Australia has just wrapped up the test series against South Africa, beating them by 175 runs in Durban. I managed to watch the second day of the test, and if that was anything to go on, the series has been just as good as, if not better than, the one over here. Johnson's barrage at the start of SA's first innings was something to behold. Good to see the rest of the young Aussie bowling attack performing so well too.

I would've watched it, but the time differences hindered that. Australia did way better there than they performed here, which is highly unusual.

NRL season kicks off in a couple of days! I'm hoping the Dragons do better than they did last year. The Sea Eagles have been rocked by off-field dramas, so only time will tell if it affects their on-field performances. They've got a lot of expectation, after winning last years grand final.

I'm hoping to go on Friday night with a couple of mates to the Storm-Dragons game, should be an absolute ripper. It'll be great to see how we go with the loss of some great players and Dragons under a multiple-premiership-winning, successful coach.

I think this season I'll be going to a few more Storm games than I will Geelong in the AFL... with the economic downturn and my current poverty, it's just too expensive to catch the V/Line out there and back, and pay nearly $25 that doesn't even guarantee a seat.

well india beat us by ten wickets, sehwag was 125 not out after 20 or so overs

Today was particularly punishing, did you get to see any of the matches at the stadiums by the way? Would have so loved to witness the Christchurch carnage, much as I pity the bowlers.

I was at Christchurch actually, it is where I live, The Boundaries are tiny, If you hit it in the air it went for six, it's what you get when rugby is the national sport

I think I'm the only metalhead triathlete in the world... soo not much to talk about here!

Yeah, it was a similar situation today as well, Sehwag hit at least two shots that didn't come right off the middle and still went for six though a few others went as deep into the stands as possible. The shot he hit off Vettori to bring up his century for instance - in a big ground like the ones in Aus, he would have holed out to the fielders in the deep with that shot. Nevertheless, the gap between the two teams was never more pronounced than today. This is the last thing NZ would have wanted after actually pushing India really hard at Christchurch. For us, well, couldn't have had a better day, India, really!!

Me and a few of my buds like to smoke and shoot hoops with some priest or maiden in the backround...lol yeah

Chew it Mikey, one point!

All in all, I honestly felt that last night was a poor game by both sides. Too many errors in the first half by the Storm (including that disasterous backwards rollback by Anthony Quinn, what was he thinking??), and too many in the second half by the Dragons. It was a fairly ugly game, but a good one to watch. Nearly 15,000 considering the AFL pre-season cup is on, that was a definite bonus, Olympic Park was pretty packed.

Is it just me or is Greg Inglis a lot fatter now?

Bah, at least it wasn't a thrashing. I didn't watch the game, but my dad said they were poor in attack (Dragons). Next week.


He's apparently put on 7 kilos or something. This is bad for the opposition.

Hopefully he just keeps gaining wait until this so called 'advantage' becomes more of a 'disadvantage.'

Seven kilos is not a lot, particularly if it's all muscle. This will just make him more dangerous, and he'll be able to trample weaker opposition with ease. I can't see it becoming a disadvantage unless he gorges on burgers.

Inglis absolutely smashed Jamie Sowat or however you spell it, just before scoring his try. Also, the way he palms everybody off drives me CRAZY! I probably hate him the most out of everyone in the NRL competition. Billy Slater comes in at 2nd place.

We prepared a pitch with gave some assitance to the bowlers, and India failed miserably, If only the BCCI didn't pay our wages then we wouldn't of made pitches which suited the Indians, this series win should be taken with a grain of salt as every other team who have come here didn't have pitches like these

Expected that from you , well you can have that consolation if you like. Firstly, Dhoni chose to bat first despite seeing the conditions didn't exactly favour that at the outset and the only reason he did that was it was a dead rubber, he thinks it's a good idea to give the players a test when the odds are against them once there's nothing to play for. He did that in two series in SL when the series was sealed. Some, though not all, of these batsmen were there to see India through a Test series win in England and also for the win at Perth. I don't think a pitch where Australia folded for 200-odd in the first innings could have been too batsman-friendly. I think it is virtually impossible to make Basin Reserve a batsman's paradise so we will know for sure then. You'll notice the middle order uncharacteristically made no effort to dig in after the top order departed; that's because they had no stomach for a fight having sealed the series. Can't attack that attitude too much when they have to play so much cricket.

In all honesty, neither side deserved to win. Bennett was right - a draw would have been a good result.

Also, Inglis is even more of a tank now than he was before. Still, nobody will take Billy Slater's place as my favourite player.

I missed the Broncos game though as I was out, how did Izzy Folau go in his first game?

1. Geelong won the NAB Cup Grand Final
2. Storm won, as mentioned before
3. LIVERPOOL BEAT MAN U 4-1. TAKE THAT MANKS.

It's been a top weekend for sport.

Well, as I had expected, NZ couldn't match India over 4 days, they can get ahead over 50 overs when they can produce a few passages of better cricket but over a long haul, India proved by far the stronger side. I had had doubts about how the NZ batters - more so than India's - would cope with a moving red cherry and sure enough the match was sealed when India ran through their top order in no time. NZ fought hard to hang in and avoid the ignominy of an innings defeat, if statistically more than anything else, but the match was India's for the taking once Gambhir and Dravid strung together a partnership and shut the door on the only realistic chance for NZ to get back into the match. Ishant was the star in the first innings while Munaf got more purchase in the second innings, Zak providing the stimulus through early breakthroughs. A perfect three-way partnership, just like in Perth 08, hope this one lasts longer than that!

This wasn't Sachin's best century by a mile, the media is crazy, but they were valuable runs and came quickly on the third morning - helped no doubt by the NZ bowlers feeding him in his favourite spots square on the offside - , so we'll take it. The biggest positive is that for the first time, Harby was influential in conditions that he normally doesn't thrive in. It doesn't matter whether there is turn or not in the pitch, he just doesn't perform well abroad, but this time, he delivered the goods in the second innings. Still a long way to go in the series, but NZ have to do all the running from hereon.

Parting shot: Mark Richardson was a wise man to backpedal on the eve of the first Test and tone down his rhetoric!

Just another nail in test crickets coffin really, its becoming too elitist with only 3-4 countries maybe being able to compete, it will die

test cricket is lacking interest in new zealand, even at the one dayers there was more indian fans than new zealand fans, an it's only going to get worse

There's hope in WI's resurgence but despair in Pak's plight, one of the elite Test nations in the previous decade. We'll see but if cricket could survive the phase when only Aus and England played each other over timeless Tests, it can survive anything! What needs to be fixed is this making of absolute dead pitches - and we got a whole series of them in the WI-England series - that cruelly brings home how boring Test cricket can be when there's no life in the pitch. Something like the pitches for the SA-Aus series - both at Aus and SA - or the one in Hamilton for this match is what we need. Hamilton was an ideal pitch, swing on day 1, spin on day 4, we were on the right side of the toss, but it seems Vettori would have batted anyway!

England was unlucky in that series, onesession of retardedness cost them the series.

Hamilton wa actualy really flat for new zealand, normally we prepare green tops because we score the same no matter what the pitch, if it's a flat pitch we throw wickets away so pitch doesnt affect us, but it affects the opposition

Eh, I still wonder that if NZ were reduced to 60/6 in one session of juice, what would they do if the pitch played like that through a whole match? The difference between now and 2002-03 is not just that you had Tuffey and Bond to demolish the opposition but also able, experienced batsmen like Astle, Fleming and McMillan to ward off the opposition bowlers. The batting is a much bigger weak link right now than the bowling for NZ. I hope that the NZ Board still persists with this combination for sometime and allows them to settle down, because guys like Guptill and Flynn might really blossom into excellent bats given time. The batting has been shuffled around too much for the last two years and that's what makes it easy for opposition teams right now.

I've got 2/5 in my NRL tipping so far this week. I guess my year is over.

Fuck, I only got 1/8 for the entire week, after a great first round!! The only one I ended up getting right was tipping the Dragons to beat the Gold Coast.

On the plus side, Manly lost at home to the Warriors... and in other news, Liverpool are right back in the title race after a 5-0 demolition of Aston Villa. At least Steven Gerrard didn't hit anyone this week touch wood