And breathe! What an incredible weekend of sporting action as Shamar Joseph’s heroics lifted the Windies to a famous Gabba win, Maidstone United into the fifth round of the FA Cup and more!
ROMANCE OF THE CUP IS ALIVE…
Everyone loves an underdog. And Maidstone United, a club 98 places lower than Ipswich on the English pyramid, produced one of the great FA Cup uspets when they beat the Championship high-fliers 2-1.
They now enter the Last 16 of the famous competition with non-League players, who are on around £2,000 a month. Some of them even have day jobs, like plumbers, electricians, bakers. Social media showed one supporter who had travelled up, falling off the roof, and into the Ipswich crowd below as he celebrated a goal (see below). He wasn’t hurt.
Reaching the Last 16 is estimated to have already netted Maidstone some £350,000. Whatever happens now – they’ve got more Championship rivals Sheff Wed or Coventry next – is a bonus, but they’ll remember the day in the small Kent town for decades to come.
Maidstone fan sliding down the stand yesterday 😭🤣 pic.twitter.com/3ClMxp90Hk
— Football Twats (@FootbaIITwats) January 28, 2024
…ALTHOUGH HATRED STILL EXISTS
On the flip side of the above, there were disgraceful scenes as West Brom met rivals Wolves for the first time in front of fans since 2012. With Wolves winning 2-0 at The Hawthorns in the 78th minute, the match was held up for 39 minutes as all hell broke loose between fans.
Matheus Cunha scored Wolves’ second goal which seemed to settle the tie and ran to celebrate his goal with the fans. Details are sketchy, but he seemed to do so in front of the home fans, or at best, where the home fans and the visitors were separated.
And the rest is hysteria. A reminder that the two clubs are 18km apart in the Midlands. Wolves’ Last 16 game is at home to Brighton.
It’s kicking off big time at The Hawthorns, absolute mayhem inside the stadium with police having to use batons to try and regain control.
— Football Away Days (@FBAwayDays) January 28, 2024
Madness! 🤯 pic.twitter.com/MCR7Z5OgxX
WINDIES DEFY ODDS TO WIN IN BRISBANE
We questioned in our weekend lookahead blog how the scientific “live probability” could have made Australia 61% favourites, with West Indies 25% and a draw at 16%, when Australia were 24 for 4 in their first innings in reply to West Indies’ 311.
The bookies too had Australia 4/7 favourites at that point. Well, they got close but the Windies still won by eight runs on day four. One guesses history might have influenced “science”?
The Windies had not beaten Australia in a Test match since 1997, but broke the 27-year drought in style, with Shamar Joseph taking 7 for 68. In the process he lost a toenail, after being hit by a Mitchell Starc yorker when last man out in the Windies’ second innings. It was a small price to pay.
Shamar Joseph. 7-fer.
— Edgbaston Stadium (@Edgbaston) January 28, 2024
An spell of pure quality. What a highlights reel. 🔥#Edgbaston | #AUSvWI pic.twitter.com/pWUHvsUeh8
UPSETS SEE PICK 6 DIVIDEND HIT R585k
The silence that momentarily descended on the Hollywoodbets tent in the moments that Double Superlative had won the WSB Cape Town Met was deafenIng.
In fact, the loudest noise was the tearing up of tickets as the red-hot “unbeatable” favourite See It Again ran a flat-footed fourth, knocking thousands out of the exotic bets. It was a day where three favourites won from the 11 races, while Little Ballerina (100/1), Ripple Effect (50/1) and Double Superlative (33/1) all found the No1 box to produce huge upsets.
The Pick 6 paid R585k, and the place accumulator R8 166. All in all, a tough day to be a punter, and further proof that in racing there’s no such thing as a certainty.
DOUBLE SUPERLATIVE wins the G1 Met! 🏆
— World Pool (@WorldPool) January 27, 2024
British AW champion jockey @D_Muscutttt takes home the feature at Kenilworth for @SnaithRacing.
🌏 🤝 @caperacing1 pic.twitter.com/GojjqCRrqX
EASY FOR SABALENKA, TOUGHER FOR SINNER
Tennis’s seedings for the first Grand Slam of 2024 didn’t work out all that badly, despite both the men’s and women’s world No1, Novak Djokovic and Iga Swiatek failing to reach their respective Australian Open singles final.
Women’s No2 seed Aryna Sabalenka successfully defended her title without conceding a set all tournament. In the men, Jannick Sinner, the No4 seed, won his first Grand Slam, while Daniil Medvedez, the No3 seed, finished runner-up after losing a five-setter.
In total, he was kept on court for 31 sets to earn $1.725m as runner-up. That’s in contrast to Sabalenka winning her seven matches all in straight sets (14) and (with Sinner) won $3.15-million for her efforts. Just don’t tell Joey Barton.
Sublime from Sinner 🥕
— #AusOpen (@AustralianOpen) January 28, 2024
The Italian 🇮🇹 clinches his maiden Grand Slam title 🏆
He triumphs in five hardfought sets 3-6 3-6 6-4 6-4 6-3 to win #AO2024. @janniksin • @wwos • @espn • @eurosport • @wowowtennis pic.twitter.com/DTCIqWoUoR
ROYAL RUMBLE ‘DRAMA’ AS PAUL WINS BY DQ
We all know that WWE is as real as Father Christmas – apologies for the spoiler – which is why I was surprised to see so much hype around Logan Paul as he retained his US Championship belt against Kevin Owens at the Royal Rumble.
Some 48,000 fans were in attendance. I’ll try to recap this: Owens was DQ’d for using brass knuckles. Paul had himself brought them into the ring, but Owens ripped them off him. Paul’s face was bloodied, although close inspection suggests the blood was coming from his neck.
Owens dragged Paul out the ring and threw him through the announcer’s table. Back in the ring, Owens tried to pin down Paul, but as the count reached two the ref spotted the brass knuckles in the challenger’s hands and DQ’d him. Paul, who is “famous” for being an influencer, is on a $15-million three-year deal with WWE.
Logan Paul retains #RoyalRumble pic.twitter.com/wTAJEtjJL1
— WCW ECW WWE (@otdz_t) January 28, 2024
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- The two leading teams in the SA20 competition played twice over the weekend, with the Durban Super Giants winning both to become the first team to qualify for the playoffs. They left the Paarl Royals, who started the competition so well, now in a fight with Sunbrisers Eastern Cape for second place.
- The Bulls beat the Lions 30-28 in their United Rugby Championship derby at Loftus, with Jordan Hendrikse missing a penalty after the hooter. We couldn’t really have expected yet another match to end with a one-point win, surely?!
- Luke Littler, the 17-year-old darts sensation, was beaten 10-8 in an epic Dutch Masters final by Michael van Gerwen. He had won the Bahrain Masters a week earlier. Against Van Gerwen, Littler averaged 106, but couldn’t close out when he had the chance.
- The Blitzboks have dropped down to third on the World Sevens rankings after finishing fifth in Perth. They lost 14-12 to Fiji in the Cup quarter-finals, before beating France 24-5. Despite beating Great Britain and Spain, the women’s Sevens team finished 10th, after losing 7-0 to Brazil in the playoff for 9th and 10th.
