Lots of late Winter/Early Spring sports here at SR, or in the south, Late Summer/Early Autumn... In the Cricket world, Australia continues its tourof South Africa, with a 2nd Test at St George's Park, Port Elizabeth, March 9th-13th. At stumps, after the second day of play, Australia is leadingconvincingly. Hosts SouthAfrica trail by 204 runs with 9 wickets remaining in the 1st innings. Kagiso Rabada, Faf du Plessis, and the SouthAfricans are not cowed by this lead, as Australia chose to bat first, and theirlead is actually the lowest lead in a while they have made in the first at batin their international test matches. So,today's (tomorrow's) next meeting should test their mettle. Meanwhile, England continues their tour ofNew Zealand with a 5th ODI at HagleyOval, Christchurch. In other Cricket news, the ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier 2018 is takingplace in Zimbabwe. The national teams often countries are playing between last Sunday and March 25th to be able tocompete with the automatic qualifiers in the 2019 Cricket World Cup. Countries competing include the West Indies, Afghanistan, hosts Zimbabwe, Ireland, the Netherlands,Scotland, Hong Kong, Papua New Guinea, Nepal and the United Arab Emirates. The tournament beings with Round Robin, ingroup play, and then continues through knockout, following the One DayInternational Format. Saturday's matchesinclude the West Indies playing Ireland at the Harare Sports Club, and Zimbabweplaying Hong Kong at the Queens Sports Club, Bulawayo. This weekend is the fourth meeting of Six Nations Rugby,which is played each February and March on select weekends. Ireland, who is so far undefeated in thetournament, hosts Scotland at the Aviva Stadium. Scotland is doing well in the tournament,also, having won lost against Wales the first week, they have rebounded to beatEngland and France. Today, France will hostEngland today at the Stade de France. France,having lost their first two games, beat Italy last week. England, having won their first two matches,lost to Scotland last week. The answeron whether Ireland can run the table will be better answer after today'sgames. In European Soccer, in the Premier League, Manchester Unitedvs. Liverpool should be a hard fought match. United showed great character tocome from two down at Crystal Palace at Monday and win, but the result flattersa performance that for the large part was disappointing. Liverpool are a betterside than Palace and with Mohamed Salah continuing to excel, Jurgen Klopp's menare well poised to exploit the fact that United are misfiring at present. inthe Bundesliga, Bayern Munich will meet Hamburg in a match today. Sunday is NCAA Mens' Basketball selection Sunday for theteams which will take part in the annual dance, the tournament to determinenumber one. So, today is chock full ofsemifinals and finals in various conferences, all wrapping up prior to theselection who tomorrow afternoon. In theIvy League Basketball Tournament, Harvardtakes on Cornell in the first semifinal,and then Yale takes on Penn (Pennsylvania), in the second semifinal game, all playedat The Palestra in Philadelphia. Did you know Cornell is in the IvyLeague? Ever heard of it? We could not finish this article without thanking our Italiancorrespondent for alerting us to a tragic situation in Serie A Soccer. On Thursday, thousands gathered in Florence forthe funeral of Italian Serie A star Davide Astori. The sudden death of the 31-year-old player, who captained his Fiorentinaclub, and played on the Italian National Squad, has sparked outpouring of grief in this football-madcountry. Children wearing Fiorentina'sdistinctive purple formed a guard of honour outside the Santa Croce basilica inthe city as Astori's coffin was carried out after the service. Italy goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon and his pastJuventus teammate Giorgio Chiellini were among the mourners having flow backfrom London where the Turin team dedicated their Champions League victory overTottenham on Wednesday to Astori. Chielliniafter the match said: "We dedicate the win to him. He is on our minds onthis day. I cried many times. He was a fantastic player." Fellow internationals Daniele De Rossi andMario Balotelli were also among players present and the entire Fiorentina team,dressed in sober dark suits and ties, came to pay their respects. Meanwhile, the European sporting world has been rocked by twoother recent untimely deaths. 17 yearold Neapolitan swimmer phenom Mario Riccio was training on Sunday afternoon whenhe felt pain in his arm. In a fewmoments his heart had stopped, and could not be restarted, not even by a defibrillator.His coach was, of course, present at his death, along with his parents andsiblings, who were spending their Sunday afternoon watching his training He was already making a name for himself in Italianand European swimming, and is described as an excellent student and athlete, with goodall around attitude. In France, theTours Football Club reported the sad and untimely death of 18 year old ThomasRodriguez. He died last week in hissleep for yet undetermined causes. Our thoughts and prayers are with their friends and families. So as not to end on such a sad note, we call your attention to the fact that Aussie Rules Football pre season has concluded, following a nontraditional format played on a soccer field, for two ten minute halves. We will introduce more about the upcoming season next weekend. That's the surest sign of a coming Winter yet! -- Posted By Rex to SR at 3/10/2018 12:51:00 AM -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "omnisport" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to omnisport+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to omnisport@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/omnisport. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
