English
Indian
العربية
Español
Deutsch
Türkçe
Русский
Français (Afrique)
England survive sluggish start to overwhelm Australia in second half
WXV: England 48-15 Australia
May Campbell kickstarts flurry of seven tries
England had to execute something they have not had to do in John Mitchell’s reign against Australia, a comeback win after being down at half-time. It was the first time in almost six years the Red Roses had been trailing after the first 40. But whatever was said in the changing room shook the team to life as they scored 43 second-half points to keep their winning streak going. forestarrow.rest
Australia gave England quite the scare in the first half. The Wallaroos were not just clinical when in attack, but were thorough and physical in defence to disrupt England’s front-foot ball. The visitors played some of their best rugby since last year’s World Cup, when they were knocked out in the quarter-finals, before falling apart in the second half. England were uncharacteristically poor at times with several knock-ons and other handling errors hampering their attack.
Continue reading...Solheim Cup 2026: USA gewinnen Samstagnachmittag-Fourballs 3:1 – Gesamtstand ausgeglichen bei 8:8
Team USA dreht den Nachmittag in Cromvoirt: Drei von vier Fourballs gehen an die Amerikanerinnen. Vor den Sonntag-Singles steht es 8:8.
Noh/Lee ringen Woad/Hull nieder – Krimi bis zum letzten Grün
Das spannungsreichste Duell des Nachmittags lieferten Yealimi Noh und Andrea Lee gegen Lottie Woad und Charley Hull. Die Engländerinnen kämpften sich nach einem Rückstand am sechsten Grün per Ausgleich zurück ins Match, mussten am 17. Loch sogar noch einmal nachlegen und hielten die Partie bis zur letzten Fahne offen. Am Ende behielten die Amerikanerinnen mit 1 UP die Oberhand. Noh zeigte dabei eine herausragende Vorstellung auf der vorderen Neun samt Eagle am achten Loch, ehe Lee auf den Schlussbahnen übernahm. Für Woad und Hull, die an diesem Wochenende bereits ihr viertes gemeinsames Match bestritten, blieb es die zweite knappe Niederlage des Tages nach dem Foursome am Vormittag.
Stark/Grant liefern erneut, Zhang/Kim und Kupcho/Duncan komplettieren das Bild
Die einzige europäische Antwort des Nachmittags kam von den 'Super Swedes': Maja Stark und Linn Grant legten mit einem Adlerschlag am ersten Loch vor, gerieten gegen Megan Khang und Lauren Coughlin zwischenzeitlich aber in ein enges Ringen. Zwei Birdies in Serie im hinteren Bereich der Runde brachten schließlich die Entscheidung zu ihren Gunsten – 2&1 und damit der dritte gemeinsame Erfolg der Schwedinnen in dieser Woche. Auf den übrigen beiden Bahnen behielt Team USA die Kontrolle: Jennifer Kupcho und Lindy Duncan setzten sich gegen Carlota Ciganda und Celine Boutier mit 1 UP durch, obwohl sich die Spanierin und die Französin früh am Nachmittag abgesetzt hatten. Rose Zhang und Auston Kim wiederum führten ihr Match gegen Nastasia Nadaud und Leona Maguire nach eigener Aussage nie unkontrolliert, gerieten zum Schluss aber ins Wackeln, ehe sie sich mit 3&2 durchsetzten und beide ihren ersten Punkt des Turniers feierten.
Stimmen: Kämpferische Töne diesseits und jenseits des Atlantiks
'Wir mussten hart kämpfen, aber es kommt von Herzen, dass wir es geschafft haben', sagte Rose Zhang im TV-Interview über ihren Erfolg mit Auston Kim. Kim ergänzte mit Blick auf die zuvor punktlose US-Bilanz der beiden: 'Man muss ein Goldfisch sein' – kurzes Gedächtnis, sofort wieder nach vorn schauen. Bei den unterlegenen Engländerinnen war der Frust über liegengelassene Chancen spürbar: 'Wir konnten einfach keinen Putt versenken', sagte Charley Hull, während Lottie Woad ergänzte, dass die Gegnerinnen am Vormittag 7 unter Par durch 14 Löcher gespielt hätten – 'ich glaube, niemand hätte sie geschlagen'. US-Kapitänin Angela Stanford hatte die Session vorab als die bislang schwierigste angekündigt: 'Das wird ein richtig harter Nachmittag' – und sollte damit recht behalten.
Ausgeglichener Gesamtstand vor den Sonntag-Einzeln
Nach 16 von 28 möglichen Punkten steht es 8:8 zwischen Europa und den USA. Damit ist die Ausgangslage vor dem Schlusstag denkbar knapp: Europa benötigt 14,5 Zähler zur Titelverteidigung, den Amerikanerinnen reichen als amtierender Titelverteidiger 14 Punkte für den Erhalt des Cups. Mit dem 3:1 im Nachmittags-Fourball zog Team USA nach einem knappen Rückstand mit dem Gastgeber gleich. Am Sonntag entscheiden zwölf Einzel über den Ausgang eines Solheim Cups, der bereits jetzt zu den engsten der jüngeren Geschichte zählt.
Alle Matches der Fourballs am Samstagnachmittag
- Maja Stark/Linn Grant – Megan Khang/Lauren Coughlin: 2 & 1 Europa
- Lottie Woad/Charley Hull – Yealimi Noh/Andrea Lee: 1 UP USA
- Nastasia Nadaud/Leona Maguire – Rose Zhang/Auston Kim: 3 & 2 USA
- Carlota Ciganda/Celine Boutier – Jennifer Kupcho/Lindy Duncan: 1 UP USA
Alle Szenen, Bilder und Loch-für-Loch-Stände: Liveticker, Livescoring, Solheim-Cup-Seite.
The post Solheim Cup 2026: USA gewinnen Samstagnachmittag-Fourballs 3:1 – Gesamtstand ausgeglichen bei 8:8 appeared first on Golf Post.
Enric Mas heads for Vuelta glory after protecting lead on penultimate stage
Movistar rider refuses to crack in brutal mountain test
Would be first home winner since Contador 12 years ago
Enric Mas all but secured overall victory in the Vuelta a España when he survived a brutal penultimate stage on the sun-baked slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains.
The 31-year-old Movistar rider spent most of the 186km stage in a group alongside Primoz Roglic, Felix Gall and Richard Carapaz – the only men who could deny him the red jersey – and simply refused to crack.
This report will update
Continue reading...GTA: London 1961 is full of cockney innuendo and harder than a bobby’s helmet
Weird Weekend is our regular Saturday column where we celebrate PC gaming oddities: peculiar games, strange bits of trivia, forgotten history. Pop back every weekend to find out what Jeremy, Josh, Ted, and Rick have become obsessed with this time, whether it's the canon height of Thief's Garrett or that time someone in the Vatican pirated Football Manager.
In the wake of GTA 6, series veterans will wax nostalgically about the era of Rockstar expansion packs. No sooner had you finished The Lost and Damned, they'll tell their nurse in between spoonfuls of prunes, The Ballad of Gay Tony landed on your hard drive. There was none of this 'waiting a decade for a new GTA' nonsense.
Fewer will remember the first age of Grand Theft Auto, when even the expansion packs had expansion packs. Really—GTA birthed GTA: London, which in turn begat GTA: London 1961. The latter was released for free online in the summer of 1999, where only a subset of disc-spinning PC gamers were ever likely to find it. Which might have been for the best. Because GTA: London 1961 is perhaps the most punishing visit to the British capital ever conceived. Even including 28 Days Later, and the press reception of Meghan and Harry.
The original Grand Theft Auto already demanded a lot from its players—splicing a nascent open world structure with the limited lives and scorechasing of the arcades. To pass a given level, you'd need to complete several back-to-back chains of missions, thereby building a sufficient multiplier to reach the target score. Getting busted would halve your multiplier instantly. And since cops only needed to bump into you to effect an arrest, like a ghost in Pac-Man, you could easily wind up back at square one, with a dwindling pool of missions to pick from.
GTA: London 1961 is perhaps the most punishing visit to the British capital ever conceived.
To this brutal ruleset, the designers of GTA: London 1961 decided to add mission timers tighter than Adam West's batsuit. How does 20 seconds from East Bermondsey to West Southwark strike you? Or 30 from Westminster Palace to the City of London, where the bankers work? Even in GTA's shrunken top-down metropolis, it's an extraordinary ask—only possible if you pick precisely the right route, floor it, and somehow avoid any serious collisions along the way. "You got to be a little faster," explains your cock-er-ney paymaster, helpfully. "Or Harold'll have your guts for gardening with!"
And should you fail, even once? Those same gangsters will throw you out on your arse, ending the mission with no way of recovery. "This ain't some leisurely afternoon stroll with a stunning bird! This is major international crime, and time and crime waits for Norman, as Harold once said! You blew it, you nob!"
I can't help but wonder how Harold can afford to be so picky with his drivers. If he's got Charlie Croker on the other end of the blower, why is he talking to me in the first place? Good riddance.
Except, without the largesse of old Harold, making money in London is no walk in the park. It might be a drive through Hyde Park, knocking down pedestrians in precise combos to try and max out your score the hard way. Or a slow, repetitive shift at the docks, feeding endless stolen cars to the crane in exchange for £100 notes. I scuppered my chances there by rolling an enormous red bus halfway into the Thames, blocking the crane and making future deliveries impossible.
Thankfully, I'm not the first person to be astonished by the obscenity of those mission timers. And GTA: London 1961 belongs to a time when in-game values could be easily tweaked via notepad files buried on your PC. A kind fellow traveller named Duckilous left instructions on the GTA Forums—an added 30 seconds here, an extra 2375 frames there—and it's no exaggeration to say that those simple inputs are transformative. "I am not a modder for the classic GTA games," my saviour writes. "This is something I just figured out in one day."
Duckilous' GTA London: 1961 remains a frantic, frazzling dash through pixellated renderings of some of the world's most famous landmarks. But that extra inch of breathing room makes all the difference. Another half a minute per mission means you actually have time to read what your objectives are before haring off towards them.
That extra inch of breathing room makes all the difference.
You even get a moment to appreciate the, ah, prose: "What the hell are you doing? You left Mr Caukenbolls all alone. Now some gang has kidnapped him. You'd better find him and get him back here, unharmed! A miss is as good as a moron in this game, mate."
Crucially, the added time means you get to complete more objectives, and therefore access more missions further down the chain. Among GTA: London 1961's scenarios are the theft of a rival gangster's clothes during a pond swim, the filming of a bespoke documentary for Harold to watch at home, and the first-ever implementation of driveby mechanics in the series. There's even a bit of Bond-lite cruising in a Jaguar with a union jack paint job, called the Jug Swinger.
But it's all over pretty fast. This, I now realise, is what the vicious timers were likely covering for: a damning scarcity of scripted missions. I managed to complete four of seven and, having failed the others, was left scraping around to make up the shortfall in my level score.
When run over with a 3x multiplier, policemen yield 3000 points each, and I calculated I'd need to pancake only about a dozen to reach the target. But eventually, even the coppers stopped showing up. London's streets turned eerily quiet, as if every last response unit in Scotland Yard had at last been totalled or exploded. The war was over.
In the end, I was combing the city from Camden to Camberwell, searching for one last way to eke out enough damage to sufficiently impress London's criminal class. And eventually, I found it: a tank parked on a football field. The cars and buildings of Westminster rocked with concussive force as rockets flew. Buckingham Palace's window bill for 1962 would be enormous. But I could finally say I'd completed GTA's toughest challenge to date. Give or take a 30 second timer.
2026 games: All the upcoming games
Best PC games: Our all-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPS games: Finest gunplay
Best RPGs: Grand adventures
Best co-op games: Better together
A star is born: Razaullah gives Pakistan fresh hopes despite England sweep | Andy Bull
The 21-year-old fast bowler’s eye-catching Test debut lit up an otherwise gloomy summer for the tourists
So they didn’t do it. And in the end they weren’t even all that close. But for a moment, when England lost two wickets in the first over, and the first loud cries of ‘Pakistan, Zindabad’ were breaking out, it felt like they just might.
Honestly, just the faint possibility was all this match, even this series, needed. The prospect of a contest was enough to make it one of those happy match mornings when nobody at the ground could be exactly sure what was in store, or see which way the day’s play was headed.
Continue reading...