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Leeds starting line-up: Meslier, Bogle, Byram, Struijk, Rodon, Ampadu (C), Rothwell, Solomon, Aaronson, James, Piroe. Substitutes: Darlow, Firpo, Schmidt, Gruev, Tanaka, Guilavogui, Ramazani, Joseph, Gnonto.

Swansea starting line-up: Vigouroux, Key, Fulton, Cabango (C), Darling, O’Brien, Tymon, Franco, Cullen, Delcroix, Ronald. Substitutes: McLaughlin, Allen, Vipotnik, Eom, Bianchini, Christie, Naughton, Cooper, Parker.

Reims v Marseille (4pm GMT)

St Etienne v PSG (6pm GMT)

Monaco v Nice (8:05pm GMT)

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Having reached the FA Cup semi-finals three times in the first 110 years of their history, Crystal Palace have now done it for the third time in a decade, an impeccable away performance seeing them ease past a Fulham side that had much of the possession, did most of the attacking and achieved next to nothing.

With wonderful skill, Eberechi Eze scored one and created another as the visitors took control of the tie in four electric first-half minutes, before the substitute Eddie Nketiah sealed victory in the second.

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After a two-year retirement prompted by burnout and fatigue, the American skater found her way back to the ice – and became the world champion no one saw coming

Alysa Liu hadn’t even checked her phone. She didn’t know who had called, who had texted or who had screamed at their television when her gold-medal score flashed onto the screen. But she knew exactly who she wanted to call first.

“My siblings,” she said, laughing. “They have no idea that this is happening.”

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Native Americans have made basketball their own as they hustle to retain and defend their culture and traditions

Long before Michael Jordan changed the sport of basketball, another Jordon transformed the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) history by breaking the league’s racial barrier as its first Native American player.

In 1956, Phil “The Flash” Jordon, a descendant of the Wailaki and Nomlaki tribes, was drafted by the New York Knicks and played 10 seasons in the league. Though he may not carry the same cultural cache as other hoopers throughout professional basketball’s century-plus existence, Jordon embodies a longstanding Native American fixation on the sport – especially at the community level. Throughout the years, Native Americans have embraced basketball and made it their own. One way they’re doing so today is with “rez ball,” a lightning-fast style of basketball associated with Native American teams.

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Veteran proving his resilience again but faces test against Jakub Mensik if he is to become third man to win 100 titles

Novak Djokovic departed Indian Wells two weeks ago with serious concerns. Aside from his one encouraging result this year, a supreme performance in his Australian Open quarter-final win over Carlos Alcaraz, the first few months of his 38th year had been grim. Father time had undeniably gained ground on him.

The hamstring injury Djokovic suffered against Alcaraz eventually forced him to withdraw from his subsequent semi-final against Alexander Zverev after only one set. After tearing his medial collateral ligament at the French Open last year, this setback marked his second grand slam withdrawal inside a year after two decades of good health.

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• Pair produce thrilling men’s 200m at Maurie Plant meet
• Claudia Hollingsworth prevails in ‘crazy’ women’s 1500m

Teenage sprint sensation Gout Gout has been upstaged by rival Lachie Kennedy in the 200m at the Maurie Plant meet in Melbourne on a night that confirms athletics’ resurgence in Australia.

In front of around 10,000 fans at Lakeside Stadium, the first sell-out at an Australian one-day athletics meet in more than two decades, the 17-year-old finished just four hundredths of a second behind his fellow Queenslander. Kennedy, who last week won Australia’s first medal in the 60m at the world indoor championships, finished in a personal best of 20.26s after running a powerful bend and holding off Gout at the line.

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Championship club face elite opposition in Aston Villa but the Lancashire city is gripped by Cup fever

‘I’ve had to tell my mum not to bother with Mother’s Day,” quips Preston fan Tom Bates. The 29-year-old has forgone the purchase of flowers, cards and the prospect of a Sunday roast to buy a ticket at Deepdale for North End’s first FA Cup quarter-final in 59 years.

The past six decades have brought Preston six relegations and promotions, a third and fourth division title and a solitary Lancashire Senior Cup. Since they triumphed in the League One playoff final in 2015 their seasons have been humdrum: they have finished between seventh and 14th each season and this is the first time they have got beyond the fourth round in either cup. It has given supporters such as Bates, who saw his first match when he was two, little to celebrate. The visit of the Champions League side Aston Villa to Lancashire will be one of the biggest days in the club’s recent history, played out in front of a vociferous crowd of 23,400. A tie at Wembley awaits the winners.

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We should be talking about how we help everyone enjoy sport, but instead players are being targeted in a dehumanising way

The “hateful language” directed at Orlando Pride’s Barbra Banda during their 2-0 defeat of Gotham FC last Sunday, understood to be transphobic and racist in nature, is part of an alarming trend, with several non-white athletes targeted for not fitting westernised standards of femininity.

The language directed at Banda from the stands was “directly addressed” by stadium security, said the hosts, Gotham FC, in a statement, and the situation was “monitored for the remainder of the match”.

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Data-crunching rivals in league of 11.4m players shocked to be left trailing by pen-and-paper approach

It is a game for the football geeks, the data-lovers, the algorithm-obsessed. But the current leader of the Fantasy Premier League (FPL), which allows participants to play at being Premier League managers during the football season, is not a data analyst, a football insider or a computer scientist, but a 67-year-old woman who uses a pen and paper to choose her team each week.

Susan Clarke, otherwise known as the Ruby Reds, achieved near-mythical status among committed FPL players this week as she beat millions of competitors to be top of the online Premier League game, despite admitting to a lo-fi approach.

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Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt are favourites for next year’s Winter Games despite the absence of facilities

Pinned to a wall inside the small wooden hut housing Britain’s only skeleton and bobsleigh push-start track is a notice delivering health and safety commands with no hint of irony.

Alongside instructions to ensure leaves and other hazards are cleared prior to use is the stipulation that the track must be free of ice. That Britain is the world’s only top sliding nation permanently navigating a lack of frozen facilities betrays the directive’s inadvertent satire.

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The late, great striker entered Goodison folklore with the winning goal in an Anfield Merseyside derby

I didn’t have a great time at university. Academically it was fine – got in, got a 2:1 in history and got out – but socially I struggled. There were various reasons for that, a fair few of which were definitely my fault. Like joining zero societies. Like joining the uni magazine but writing zero articles for it. And like what happened on my first night there.

It was about 6pm on Monday 27 September 1999 and I was back in my dorm after registering for my courses, checking out the library and buying my first pint of milk and loaf of bread from the campus shop. Suddenly there was a knock at the door. It was Daniel, the lad from the next room, and he was standing alongside two girls I’d never seen but who were really attractive.

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Sheffield United made light work of playoff hopefuls Coventry at Bramall Lane as a 3-1 win swept them back to the top of the Championship.

Gus Hamer opened the scoring against his former club with a brilliant free-kick and after Tyrese Campbell had put the Blades 2-0 up at half-time, Rhian Brewster slammed home a game-clinching third.

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Borrowing from the All Blacks, manager says the power of psychology has helped his side recover from 7-0 drubbing

Were Fabian Hurzeler in any doubt about the importance of the FA Cup to Brighton fans, he received a gentle reminder when back in his home town of Munich. Hurzeler’s short international break, among family and friends, received a polite but pointed interruption. “Walking through the city, one of the Brighton supporters called my name and said he’s really looking forward to the game,” said the club’s head coach. “He said that we have to give everything in this game, and of course you feel it, but for me it’s important that we don’t make it artificial excitement.”

Hurzeler, born a decade after Albion lost the 1983 final to Manchester United in a replay, can be excused for not knowing the lore of Steve Foster’s headband, Tony Grealish’s hirsute captaincy and the striker Gordon Smith’s “must score” miss. There are always the owner, Tony Bloom, and the club’s time-served staffers to run through the details. In any case, Brighton relived that Wembley day two seasons ago, another hard-luck loss to United in the semi-finals, this time on penalties.

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• Warrington 16-14 Leeds
• Visitors squander eight-point lead in second half

Almost 29 years to the day since Super League kicked off in Paris amid a flurry of excitement and hysteria, two teams with very different histories in the competition’s biggest games delivered a thriller for the 5,000th match in the history of the league.

The early evidence is still unclear on whether or not Warrington can claim a first Super League title – and first league title since 1955 – this year, or whether Leeds can add to the eight Grand Finals they already have. But they certainly showed enough between them to suggest they will be in the mix when the pressure is on come September and the scramble for Old Trafford reaches boiling point.

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• 4-1 World Cup qualifying defeat was last straw for CBF
• Brazil have lost fives times so far in Conmebol group

Brazil have sacked their head coach, Dorival Junior, the country’s football confederation (CBF) said on Friday, after the five-times world champions were thrashed 4-1 by fierce rivals Argentina in a humiliating World Cup qualifying loss in Buenos Aires on Wednesday.

The 62-year-old was appointed in January 2024 after the team spent a year under two caretaker coaches as the Brazilian FA were unable to tempt the Italian Carlo Ancelotti from Real Madrid.

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• World No 5 beats Grigor Dimitrov 6-2, 6-3 in semi-final
• Czech fires 25 aces to sink Taylor Fritz 7-6 (4), 4-6, 7-6 (4)

Novak Djokovic delivered an emphatic display to seal his place in the Miami Open final with a straight-sets victory over Grigor Dimitrov, to leave unseeded Czech teenager Jakub Mensik as all that stands in the Serb’s way of reaching another milestone.

The 24-time grand slam champion needed only 69 minutes to secure a one-sided 6-2, 6-3 win against his Bulgarian opponent. Djokovic, 37, is bidding to land his 100th career title – and a record seventh in Miami – and his first since teaming up with Andy Murray as his coach.

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• Bidders have raised concerns about sale of TV rights
• Deadline to sign moved back to the end of April

The prospective buyers of the eight Hundred franchises have been given more time to complete deals that will inject at least GBP520m into English cricket after four of them raised concerns about the terms of the agreement.

As first reported by the Daily Telegraph, the eight-week exclusivity period agreed with the England and Wales Cricket Board at the start of February will pass without contracts being signed, but all parties are confident that agreement will be reached by the new deadline, which has been extended until the end of April.

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Fifa president’s talk of the Club World Cup promoting access and equity is simply double-think to disguise another land grab

It takes a while for the voice to emerge from the background haze, a mist of generically noodling electronic music, the kind of music that comes filled with a comforting sense of death, hold music from the executive euthanasia clinic.

Finally the voice emerges, whispering through your headphones in that familiar rich, reverent Euro-tone, like being spoken to by the sun. This is a voice that says: I am here to command. But I am also just a conduit for a divinity that flows through me and into you. Although mainly, and let’s be absolutely clear, through me.

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Now the 19-year-old Filipina’s challenge is to handle the unavoidable pressure and build a successful career

In the early hours of Friday morning, after nearly two weeks spent slaying giants, Alexandra Eala slumped in her chair inside the vast Hard Rock Stadium, her unforgettable run in Miami finally at an end. Before she could even begin to reflect on her mixed emotions of pride and disappointment, however, she was hit by a wall of noise.

The audience, still filled with Filipino fans at 12.45am, had opted to celebrate Eala’s achievements with a thunderous standing ovation. She responded immediately, raising both fists to the air and then blowing kisses to all corners of the stadium with a smile.

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Lancashire and England opening bowler who played in the victorious England Ashes side of 1971

Peter Lever, who has died aged 84, was a fast-medium bowler for Lancashire for 17 years and for England in 17 Test matches. In many ways he was the epitome of the staunch English professional cricketer, dedicated, modest and devoted to the game he loved. And yet throughout his career he experienced moments way beyond the norm, one of which was harrowing in the extreme.

He toured Australia twice, under the captaincy of Ray Illingworth in 1970-71 when England regained the Ashes with Lever playing in five of the six Tests, and then on the less successful expedition under Mike Denness four years later, during which an unsuspecting England team was confronted by the combination of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson for the first time. It was just after that series when a battered England side had moved on to New Zealand that Lever had the most traumatic experience of his life.

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• Historical allegations made to whistleblowing email
• English rugby league’s governing body under pressure

The Rugby Football League has received multiple anonymous whistleblowing complaints containing historical allegations of sexism and misogyny in the workplace.

The complaints come amid turmoil in the English game’s governing body for weeks, with the chair, Simon Johnson, and three female directors resigning this month and the Bradford Bulls chairman, Nigel Wood, appointed to head a “club-led strategic review” of the sport after a bitter power struggle.

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• New pan-disability team puts three England sides in one
• Two deaf players have quit over ‘lack of consultation’

The England and Wales Cricket Board has been accused of making disability cricket less inclusive, while several players have already quit in protest after the governing body “streamlined” three England teams into one mixed disability setup.

The world’s first ever pan-disability international series – which means open to all disabilities – will take place in England against India in June and July. The format mirrors England’s domestic Disability Premier League in bringing together the existing Physical Disability (PD), Learning Disability (LD) and Deaf teams to play as one group.

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Grab your tinfoil trophy, rattle and big rosette, because the Proper FA Cup is back! We’re at the quarter-final stages, and things look very different this year with most of the usual suspects having already crashed out. Manchester City are the obvious playground bullies – although in their current state, the kind who can be seen off with a swift kick in the swingers. Still, even if we disregard the three FA Cups won in their Abu Dhabi era, City are still the most recent winners. So without further ado, let’s climb into the time machine and revisit each team’s Cup highlights ...

“I left 40 degrees in Rio to go to -5 … the first time I trained I couldn’t finish the session because I was too cold. When I finished I would put my hands in like boiling water because they were almost frozen” – Evanilson tells Ben Fisher about his journey from Brazil to Bournemouth, via Slovakia and Portugal.

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• Whole Game Union tables 11 amendments to governance
• Nottingham chair calls for ‘fundamental change’

The rebel clubs who called for Bill Sweeney’s resignation as chief executive of the Rugby Football Union say they want to see significant changes to the way the union operates within the next three months despite failing to win sufficient support for their motion of no confidence at Thursday’s special general meeting (SGM).

Alistair Bow, chair of Nottingham and co-chair of the Whole Game Union which forced the SGM, said the clubs now expect to see words put into action after Sweeney survived the vote on a turnout of just 54% of the membership. The Whole Game Union has already tabled 11 proposals for further governance changes before the union’s annual general meeting (AGM) on 30 June.

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• Manchester City coach says team doesn’t deserve bonus
• Guardiola on Rodri’s recovery: ‘We must be careful’

Pep Guardiola has said that if ­Manchester City win this summer’s Club World Cup he, his players and staff do not deserve even “a watch” as a bonus given their disappointing season.

The champions travel to Bournemouth for Sunday’s FA Cup ­quarter-final in the only other competition they can win. City are fifth in the Premier League, 22 points behind the leaders, Liverpool, were eliminated from the Champions League in February and went out of the Carabao Cup in the last 16.

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• Club promoting 65,000-capacity ground in Leazes Park
• Conservation status could complicate the project

Newcastle have produced a glossy promotional video of a new 65,000-capacity stadium at Leazes Park in the strongest indication yet that they are planning to leave St James’ Park, their home since 1892.

Club executives presented the chairman, Yasir al-Rumayyan, with plans for a new stadium and a redevelopment of St James’ in a meeting at Matfen Hall in Northumberland last month, but have yet to confirm their intentions.

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Fears the Premiership is becoming a ‘closed shop’ are stoking more discontent for the RFU and its chief executive

As with so many of England’s games this season the outcome remained in the balance until the final moments. Bill Sweeney and his fellow Rugby Football Union top-table occupants had to look nervously up over their right shoulders and wait like everyone else before the final numbers materialised and the result was safely bagged. Sweeney had avoided a vote of no confidence and survived to fight another day as the RFU’s chief executive.

It wasn’t a big surprise. Team Love It had beaten Team List It, as so often seems to happen in these sort of domestic arguments. The final margin was 206 for and 466 against with 36 abstentions and barely half the eligible stakeholders bothering to vote. Decisive in one sense, rather less so in others. Which neatly sums up English rugby’s split persona just now.

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• Ex-player was initially sentenced in February 2024
• Court rules unanimously that conviction was unsafe

The former Brazil international Dani Alves has had his conviction for rape overturned on appeal.

In February 2024, a court sentenced Alves to a minimum sentence of four years and six months for the rape of a 23-year-old woman in a Barcelona nightclub in December 2022. As he had already spent more than a year on remand, Alves was released under legal supervision shortly afterwards.

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England prop Sarah Bern says the World Cup is on players’ minds as they head to the Principality Stadium

The Red Roses are striving to play the perfect game, says the prop Sarah Bern as England prepare to face Wales in the Women’s Six Nations at the Principality Stadium on Saturday.

The Red Roses have won their past 21 games in a row across all competitions but Bern believes there is room for improvement. In round one last Sunday that was definitely the case, despite the team beating Italy 38-5. The Red Roses had been ruthless in the first half, racking up 33 points, but scored only one try in the second.

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Have you been paying attention to the big stories in football, rugby, boxing, motor sport, figure skating?

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Paul Bamba was ambitious and loved by his friends and family. But his quest for success was built on dubious fights and a fatal disregard for his own health

As 2023 drew to a close, Paul Bamba was a marginal club fighter with a record of five wins and three losses, compiled against mediocre opposition. Then his career changed in a very strange way. Bamba fought 14 times in 2024 and won all 14 of those fights by knockout. On 21 December 2024 he was credited with defeating Rogelio Medina Luna in a fight for the World Boxing Association ‘gold’ cruiserweight championship when Medina quit on his stool after the sixth round.

Bamba was living his dream. But the dream appears to have been a fantasy built in significant measure on fixed fights.

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World No 1 made surprise appearance in Monday’s episode as viewer numbers again dropped, but more slowly

Magnus Carlsen, the world No 1, made a cameo appearance via video in Monday’s third episode of BBC Two’s Chess Masters: The Endgame, setting a challenge to memorise a position from a “special” World Blitz game. Viewer numbers, ­supplied by Broadcast, again dropped, but more slowly, from 890,000 in the first episode to 710,000 last week and 655,000 this time.

Carlsen displayed the position after 29…Ka6 of his 2022 World Blitz game with ­Richard ­Rapport.

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• Former manager jokes Tuchel aims to ruin England team
• Redknapp briefly puts on German accent at charity event

Harry Redknapp called Thomas Tuchel a German spy and appeared to perform a Nazi salute during a discussion about the England head coach at a charity event.

Redknapp, the former Portsmouth, Tottenham and West Ham manager, was speaking in front of an audience at a London venue last week. The Guardian has seen footage of the 78-year-old’s remarks about Tuchel, which came when he was asked whether England were right to appoint the German.

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Something that goes viral now and again is the particulars of the house sale of someone rich, famous and very possibly lacking in taste. Sure, that saloon bar created in the style of the East End pub off Goodnight Sweetheart felt like a good idea at the time, as did that mirrored master bedroom ceiling adorned in the style of Jeff Koons’ Cicciolina period. How will it sell on the open market? Quartz and pine are very much out, and as for that kitchen island … how much are they going to have to lower the price to get shot? It’s a doer-upper, surely.

This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

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After her seizure in Rome last June, the British athlete has rebuilt her health and running career and plans for a final summer on the track

Jess Warner-Judd and her husband, Rob, are collectors. Everywhere they go – and international athletics requires a lot of travel – they return with a mug, a postcard, a badge and a fridge magnet. All around their soon-to-be-former Loughborough home – new horizons await after a traumatic summer last year – are reminders of the journeys they have made together and races they have run. My tea comes in a Starbucks mug from Berlin; Jess’s mug from one of her multiple US ventures.

The coffee shop chain Starbucks produces different mugs in almost every region they operate in worldwide. There are hundreds; it is a collectors’ dream. Handily, for storage purposes, they are stackable, although the American ones have recently been displeasingly redesigned, apparently. All of this I learn as the couple’s dogs, Bruce and Bernie, run around breezily parading their favourite toys, and the house rabbits, Bea and Bailey, enjoy an afternoon on the lawn in the unseasonably clement weather.

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A pub visit with the T20 extravaganza on in the background said much about its appeal and status in England

A man walks into a pub, orders a drink and sits down. On two huge screens either side of the bar, the 2025 Indian Premier League is taking place, not that this establishment’s punters are paying it much attention. April and the English domestic cricket season are just around the corner as, 5,000 miles away, the 18th edition of the IPL has just begun. The tournament will roll on until the end of May, a juggernaut with Ceat tyres. Ceat, helping the world move safely and smartly.

Now I know what you are thinking: it’s that time of year when a sniffy English cricket writer has a pop at the razzmatazz of the IPL while getting misty-eyed about a county seamer hooping a Dukes about on damp English loam. Well, not quite. That was the old me. Wonder Cement stands for fairness, integrity and pursuit of truth. It’s only right that they are the official sponsor of the next paragraph.

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Brazilian followed her heart with a move across the Atlantic to the WSL in January and has already had a big impact

Kerolin joined Manchester City from North Carolina Courage in January and last week showed everyone exactly why she made the move. On the biggest stage in European football, the Champions League, the Brazilian produced the performance of her City career so far to help set up a 2-0 quarter-final first leg win against Chelsea.

Kerolin was a constant thorn in Chelsea’s side throughout the game and provided the assist for one of Vivianne Miedema’s two goals to set up a tantalising scoreline before the return leg at Stamford Bridge on Thursday.

This is an extract from our free weekly email, Moving the Goalposts. To get the full edition, visit this page and follow the instructions. Moving the Goalposts will be published twice a week from next week.

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The Dutch rider was narrowly beaten in her bid to retain her title. But she has stormed back at the start of this season using lessons from her childhood

Earlier this month, on the final climb of the Strade Bianche, Demi Vollering flew past Anna van der Breggen, her former coach and renewed rival, handily winning by 18 seconds. As the first spring classic of the year, the Italian race is renowned for its white gravel roads and regarded as a barometer of early season fitness. Vollering, already one of her sport’s best riders, showed she was capable of an even higher level.

“The whole team was motivated, so I wanted to win for them,” says Vollering, “but I didn’t feel a lot of pressure before the race, because everything is new with the team.”

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Jordan Henderson is a great leader for England. But he has been encouraged and applauded for the very same acts for which minority ethnic players are castigated and stigmatised

How shall I lead thee? Let me count the ways. I lead thee by stepping up and being vocal, around the dressing room, setting standards in training. I lead thee quietly by example, you know, the not-much-of-a-shouter-and-a-screamer-but-when-he-speaks-people-listen kind. I lead thee by having been there, done that, won everything in the game. I lead thee by never backing down from a challenge. I lead thee by sheer gravitas.

By any of these measures, Jordan Henderson is a leader. He was a leader for Liverpool, raising standards and setting the tone for 12 golden years. He was a leader for the NHS and the LGBTQ+ community off the field. He was still a leader when he left Liverpool and moved to Saudi Arabia in an attempt to create – in his words – “positive change” in the country for his beloved LGBTQ+ constituents.

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Plus: managers sacked just before cup finals, and teams with goal differences higher than their league position

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“Uzbekistan are playing Kyrgyzstan in a World Cup qualifier this Thursday,” notes Ben Jones. “Is this fixture the highest combined Scrabble score for a pair of Fifa nations? Bosnia and Herzegovina might have something to say, but I’m looking for a combined score from two teams who have actually played each other.”

Uzbekistan (25 Scrabble points) beat Kyrgyzstan (30) 1-0 to close in on a first-ever World Cup qualification – and Ben’s question inspired a flurry of tile-totting emails. Before we dive in, some ground rules. To try and keep things relatively simple, we’ll stick with the country names in English that are used by Fifa. So no long official names eg ‘Kingdom of …’ – and we’re using the English language Scrabble scoring system.

Iran v Laos (last played in 2004) is the lowest Scrabble score for an international fixture, notes Andrew Hastie.

Pete Tomlin suggests Venezuela v Brazil (38pts) as South America’s highest-scoring fixture, and New Zealand v Papua New Guinea (45pts) for Oceania.

Chris Roe adds that in English football, Sheffield Wednesday v Wolverhampton Wanderers is worth 75 points, opening a whole new can of worms.

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New Laver Cup Team Europe vice-captain won’t be moving into coaching even if he does like the look of Jack Draper

Tim Henman says he has no intention of following Andy Murray’s lead into full-time coaching despite being appointed the new vice-captain of Team Europe at the Laver Cup. From this year, Henman will act as a mentor to some of the best players in the world alongside the team captain, Yannick Noah, the 1983 French Open champion.

“I think coaching is a far bigger commitment in terms of time, in terms of travel, and I’ve had those offers, but it just doesn’t appeal to me,” Henman said. “And that may change. I would never shut the door on coaching an individual player. I was involved in the ATP Cup, but that was a very specific event.

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As data reshapes coaching and tactics at club and international level, the numbers are increasingly king

Once upon a time coaching sport was deceptively simple. Many years of experience could be distilled into a gut instinct of how best to respond in certain situations. Selection was more of an art and less of a science and you didn’t have smarty-pants analysts telling you stuff that – damn it! – you could already see with your own eyes from 50 yards away.

Pray for the old-timers because rugby’s tech era is well and truly here. Nowadays, one game spawns millions of pieces of usable data. Wearable technology attached to one player can collect information from 300 data points at a rate of 40 times per second. Skeletal tracking, microchipped balls – less painful than it sounds – and myriad other previously invisible markers are now routinely available. Farewell, then, leaky Biros and old-school clipboards.

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Disaster unfolded at the start of the seventh fleet race of the Oracle San Francisco Sail Grand Prix on Sunday when Australia suffered a dramatic wing collapse as they approached the line in the start box. All athletes were accounted for and physically unharmed. The cause of the incident is not yet clear.

• ‘A very scary situation’: Australia’s wingsail collapses at start of SailGP race in San Francisco

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Complaints that Irish trainers have too much influence has opened a debate about what is good for business

There is still more than enough time for a slice of bad luck to rule out a runner or two, but for practical purposes, the probable field for the Grand National at Aintree on Saturday week was largely confirmed at last week’s forfeit stage. It was not long before the complaints began to arrive – from some British trainers, at least.

Kim Bailey and Dr Richard Newland, both past winners of the world’s most famous steeplechase, voiced concerns that the race is now dominated by the biggest stables in Ireland, and two trainers – Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott – in particular. Sara Bradstock, meanwhile, expressed frustration that Mr Vango, the star of her small stable near Wantage, is unlikely to make the cut despite having plenty of form – and a handicap mark – that would make him a very live contender.

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George Foreman, the legendary heavyweight boxer, has died at the age of 76, his family has announced in an Instagram post on his account. Foreman, best remembered for his bout with Muhammad Ali, had a significant impact on boxing as a sport, but also as a figure in US pop culture and as a businessman. In 1977, he became an ordained minister

• George Foreman, boxing champion and entrepreneur, dies aged 76

• George Foreman: from outsider to one of America’s most popular sportsmen

• George Foreman – a life in pictures

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Kirsty Coventry has been elected president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), becoming the first woman and first African in the committee's 131-year history to get the job. The former swimmer, a two-time Olympic gold medallist, won 49 of the 97 votes of the IOC membership in the first round of voting

• Kirsty Coventry elected first female president of IOC as Coe routed in vote

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Sir Gareth Southgate has expressed his concern that 'callous, manipulative and toxic influencers' are taking the place of traditional father figures in society and contributing to mental health issues among young men. He believes the decline in communities and a lack of mentors – or 'father figures' – are causing more young men to become reluctant to talk or express their emotions. Southgate voiced concern that 'this void is filled by a new kind of role model who do not have their best interest at heart'.

• Gareth Southgate rails against ‘callous toxic influencers’ in Dimbleby Lecture

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