A Saturday evening in 1991 and Sam Allardyce is tramping the streets of Limerick with a priest. They are searching for local businessmen willing to help pay the wages of Limerick City footballers. It is difficult finding the £100 a week that keeps Allardyce’s better players happy and it is a routine that manager Allardyce and the club chairperson will repeat through the season.
The JSE touched a record high in morning trade on Friday, helped by a softer rand and a rebound in commodity prices. It was nonetheless a fairly uneventful morning’s trade. By 11.56am, the all-share index was up 0,77% at 20 315,37 after earlier touching a lifetime high of 20 324,09.
Tickets for Juventus’s Champions League quarterfinal against Arsenal went on sale in Italy last Friday, and they were hardly flying out of the box office. Well, they never are nowadays. Juventus might be the defending Serie A champions and the self-styled most popular club in Italy backed by an estimated 11-million fans, but their crowds are an absolute abomination.
The late lamented Steve Strydom had no doubt there was a place for it, he just didn’t know what to call it. Video ref? Telly ref? Too familiar. So it became the television match official, or the TMO. Only those involved with the administration of the laws ever use either of those terms, of course.
Unless Brazil enforces existing conservation laws, it will lose more than 40% of its Amazon rainforest by 2050, say scientists. The predictions are among the first to emerge from a unique, large-scale study that is using computer models to simulate how factors such as logging, farming and climate could affect the future of the forest.
The Sri Lankan cricket board on Friday gave ace off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan a car for becoming the first bowler to claim 1Â 000 wickets in international cricket. A host of dignitaries, past and present Sri Lankan players and the entire Pakistan team attended a function organised by Sri Lanka Cricket on Thursday to honour the prolific bowler.
Australia has failed to make any significant progress over the past 30 years on improving the education of Aboriginal people, by far the country’s most disadvantaged group, according to a survey released on Friday. The survey of about 2 500 students in Western Australia state found that Aboriginal students started school at a disadvantage to non-Aboriginal children and the gap only widened during their years in the classroom.
Police were keeping an eye on striking private security guards in the Johannesburg city centre on Friday. About 100 guards had gathered at Beyers Naude Square by 9am, police said. In other centres, striking security workers were also expected to march in support of their demands for better wages and working conditions.
The West Indies are hoping for a massive reversal of fortunes in the final Test against New Zealand in Napier on Saturday while the hosts are looking to pull off a clean sweep in preparation for their expected tough tour of South Africa. Despite their 10-wicket loss in the second Test in Wellington being the West Indies’ eighth successive defeat, coach Bennett King claimed his team’s spirits were still intact.
The private jet set has a new member. Baleka Mbete, the Speaker of Parliament, in January travelled to Monrovia in Liberia on a chartered flight with a price tag of R471 900. The trip, which was not publicly announced, took place amid a storm of controversy over Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka’s use of an airforce Falcon for a holiday in Dubai.