Week one of competition in Aussie Rules Football comes to aclose today. St Kilda's Jack Steven is aconfirmed starter for Sunday afternoon's clash with the Gold Coast Suns atMarvel Stadium, with both sides going in unchanged. Steven took a mental health break in lateFebruary but returned to the club and has been training. He was named to start on the bench. The Saints will have two debutants in MatthewParker and Callum Wilkie, while former Melbourne forward Dean Kent will playhis first game for the club. Meanwhile,the Suns will have prized draftee Jack Lukosius playing his first career game,along with Chris Burgess. Sam Collins,Jack Hombsch, George Horlin-Smith, Jordan Murdoch and Anthony Miles willcontinue their AFL careers after having previously played with other sides. Later today, the GWS Giants take on Essendon at the SydneyShowground Stadium, and the Fremantle Dockers take on the North Melbourne Roosat the Optus Stadium. Worldwide soccer experiences a bit of a change this weekend,with well known players going home to play for their national teams. Since Wednesday these national"friendlies" have been played, and continue through the weekend untilTuesday. Whilst throughout the worldthese friendlies have little importance, in Europe, where soccer is king, theydo have some importance in preparations for the 2020 Euro Cup. Raheem Sterling showed that he is coming ofage on the international stage as his hat-trick saw England start their Euro2020 qualifying campaign by hammering the Czech Republic 5-0, while AntoineGriezmann inspired France to a battering of Moldova. Manchester City attacker Sterling had scored just two goals inhis first 45 caps, but he now has five in his last three internationalappearances following Friday's triple, which helped England storm to the top ofGroup A ahead of Monday's trip to Montenegro, who drew 1-1 at Bulgaria. Antoine Griezmann opened the scoring for France againstMoldova in their 4-1 win. Griezmann opened the scoring with his 27th Francegoal in the 24th minute of their Group H encounter at Moldova before crossingfor Raphael Varane to double the score three minutes later. Olivier Giroud equalled David Trezeguet asFrance's third highest scorer of all time with his 34th international goal nineminutes before the break and Kylian Mbappe completed the rout with threeminutes left, before Vladimir Ambros claimed a late consolation for Moldova. France's display garnered three points andtop spot in the group ahead of Iceland and Turkey, 2-0 winners against Albaniaand Andorra respectively. Cristiano Ronaldo was frustrated on his return to thePortugal side after a goalless draw with Ukraine. He drew a blank on his returnto international football after nine months away, as Ukraine battled to agoalless draw in Lisbon. The draw wasthe first time the reigning European champions have failed to score at home in19 matches and leaves them second in the group behind Luxembourg, who beatLithuania 2-1. "We didn't play aswe wanted to. We started slowly, not pressing the way we wanted," saidManchester City midfielder Bernardo Silva. "The second half we tried to create chances to go after the gamebut unfortunately we didn't score." Ronaldo tooks some time during his visit to the Iberian Peninsula to swing through Madrid, causing a sensationin the place that loves him best. He wasthere on business, and also appearing on behalf of a favorite charity. National play continues today. Although the US National team will meet Chileon Tuesday evening in an international friendly at Houston, a full schedule of Major League Soccer isbeing played today throughout the US. In the United States, the NCAA Men's Basketball orgy ofactivity continues. Today concludesRound 2 of both the NCAA and the NIT tournaments. The fields will be better in hand today,being reduced for the next two rounds, which will take place later thisweek. Today's slate includes Duke andNorth Carolina. The first game of theday features Tennessee vs. Iowa. Later,Xavier meets Texas, and Harvard meets North Carolina State in the NationalInvitational Tournament. -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/omnisport. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
