Northern Bulls centre JP Nel was suspended for three weeks on a striking charge by a judiciary hearing on Sunday following Saturday’s Super 14 win over the New South Wales Waratahs in Sydney. Nel was cited for striking Waratahs flanker Rocky Elsom in the 70th minute of the match, won by the Bulls 32-19.
Not even the spectre of the supposedly unlucky number 13 could derail the Mamelodi Sundowns juggernaut as the rampant Brazilians extended to 13 their unbeaten run of matches in accounting for a gallant, but outclassed, Santos 2-1 at the Johannesburg Stadium on Saturday night.
Cristiano Ronaldo converted a second-half penalty to give Manchester United a 2-2 draw at Middlesbrough in the quarterfinals of the FA Cup on Saturday. Ronaldo’s 17th goal of the season came in the 68th minute after a hand ball from Middlesbrough captain George Boateng. ”We never gave in and we got our deserved equaliser,” Man United coach Alex Ferguson told Sky Sports News.
Mauro Bergamasco scored a dramatic late try as Italy beat Wales 23-20 in Rome on Saturday to record an unprecedented second win in a Six Nations campaign. However, the match ended in controversy when the full-time whistle blew just after Wales had declined an opportunity to kick what could have been a score-levelling penalty.
Ireland’s 19-18 win over Scotland, their third Triple Crown triumph, in four years was overshadowed on Saturday by a row over an alleged choking assault on flyhalf Ronan O’Gara. Ireland coach Eddie O’Sullivan claimed after the match that an unidentified Scots player had left O’Gara blue in the face and close to losing consciousness.
The Sharks continued their impressive form in the Super 14 and maintained their unbeaten status with a hard-fought but deserved 30-14 win over the Cheetahs in Bloemfontein on Saturday. The Sharks trailed 13-14 at the break, but were more purposeful in the second half, scoring two of their tree tries in this period.
Kaizer Chiefs went on the rampage and blasted Bloemfontein Celtic 4-0 in a Premier soccer League game played at Absa Stadium in Durban on Saturday night. Chiefs led 2-0 at the interval. Chiefs, under the guidance of Kostadin Papic and Johannes Mofokeng for the first time, started attacking from the first whistle.
FW De Klerk, in an interview with Britain’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper, said that non-black people in South Africa feel like ”second-class” citizens. ”… affirmative action has led to a substantial percentage of not only Afrikaners, but of all whites and coloureds and Indians feeling that their groups are being reduced to a sort of second-class citizenship,” he told the paper.
The United Nations Human Rights Council will open a three-week session on Monday with member states and top officials smarting from Sudan’s rebuffing a mission to assess the situation in strife-torn Darfur. The fledgling and divided assembly, which replaced the largely discredited commission in 2006, is struggling to build up its monitoring rules by a mid-year deadline.
Iraq signalled that world powers and neighbouring states, including Washington and its adversaries Iran and Syria, had agreed in Baghdad it was in everyone’s interest to stop sectarian violence spreading in the region. But while the United States is increasing its number of troops in Iraq, Iran called for the withdrawal of all US forces on grounds they fuelled violence.