It all started so well for Daniel Ricciardo at the Monaco Grand Prix, but by the end of the day his bad luck at Renault had reached new lows.

Starting from a surprisingly strong sixth on the grid, the reigning Monaco champion launched up the outside of Kevin Magnussen’s Haas to snatch fifth position.

Ahead of him the big three: two Mercedes, a Red Bull and a Ferrari.

And that was about it.

By lap three Ricciardo was already almost five seconds behind the car in fourth, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel. By lap five he was 11 seconds behind and holding up the rest of the field.

The plan appeared to be to take care of his tyres and hope for a safety car, but when that moment finally came on lap nine it resulted in the Australian’s race being run.

Indeed the only driver who had worse luck on the weekend was Ferrari’s Charles LeClerc, who had started from 15th after a team snafu in qualifying and shredded a tyre on a safety barrier while trying to push his way through the field.

Panicked, frustrated and desperate to get into the pits LeClerc ran the length of the circuit trailing rubber and smashing the underside of his car – the debris clean-up requiring a safety car.

Tweet from @Mattzel89

Ricciardo and Magnussen immediately went to the pits, but when the cars behind them did not they found themselves back in 13th and 14th and trailing behind a slow Kimi Raikkonen in his Alfa Romeo.

Magnussen’s team principal Guenther Steiner explained to Foxsport that it was a risk that both drivers had to take.

“It was the only thing to do because we did not know who was following in afterwards,” he said.

Up front Lewis Hamilton ultimately held off all comers, despite having to be talked off the ledge by the Mercedes strategists throughout the race as his medium compound tyres went off.

He eventually made them last 67 laps when the expected lifespan of the Pirelli’s is around 50.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen finished second, despite a penultimate lap lunge that saw him hit the back of Hamilton’s car.

Verstappen was dropped to fourth in the standings after a five second time penalty was applied for an unsafe release in the pit lane on lap 11.

Vettel took second after driving a solid, if uneventful race, while Hamilton’s teammate Valtteri Bottas was third.

It was an emotional win for Hamilton after the death of Mercedes’ insider and three-time world champion Niki Lauda

“That was definitely the hardest race I think I’ve had,” he said.

“Nevertheless, I think I was fighting with the spirit of Niki … I was just trying to stay focused and trying and make him proud.

Down the pack, Ricciardo had finally made his way back into ninth to claim ttwo world championship points.

It wasn’t fifth and in with a chance, but in a year that started with a dnf in Melbourne it was at least something.

The Australian has eight points for the year and remains in 12th place.

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Cleary survives, as new Blues blooded

Nathan Cleary has retained his NSW State of Origin No.7 jumper with coach Brad Fittler naming the 21-year-old and five debutants in his side for State of Origin I.

Cleary had been under pressure to keep his spot after his club side Penrith’s lacklustre start to the season, the Panthers sitting second last on the NRL ladder.

With Mitchell Pearce (groin) and Luke Keary (concussion) ruled out, Cleary was named to partner South Sydney’s Cody Walker in the halves.

Cleary was picked ahead of the Rabbitohs’ Adam Reynolds, who picked up a leg injury in his side’s match against Wests Tigers on Saturday night, but was understood to be available for selection.

Walker is one of five debutants along with Rabbitohs teammate Cameron Murray, Canberra pair Nick Cotric and Jack Wighton and Brisbane young gun Payne Haas.

The Roosters’ Angus Crichton edged out St George Illawarra’s Tariq Sims for a spot on the bench.

There’s expected to be question marks over the fitness of Tyson Frizell, the Dragon under an injury cloud after being knocked out in a sickening head clash with Josh Dugan during his side’s match against Cronulla on Sunday.

The team will be captained by Boyd Cordner and includes 11 players from the squad that won last year’s series, while Josh Morris returns to the Origin arena after a three-year absence.

State of Origin I will played at Suncorp Stadium on June 5. Queensland names its side on Monday.

NSW: James Tedesco, Nick Cotric, Latrell Mitchell, Josh Morris, Josh Addo-Carr, Cody Walker, Nathan Cleary, David Klemmer, Damien Cook, Paul Vaughan, Boyd Cordner, Tyson Frizell, Jake Trbojevic. Interchange: Jack Wighton, Payne Haas, Cameron Murray, Angus Crichton.


Titans turnaround

Gold Coast’s come-from-behind win against Manly may have just saved the job of coach Garth Brennan, at least for now.

Pressure has been mounting on Brennan after a terrible start to the season. But the Titans stunned the competition when they rallied from 12-0 down at Brookvale to sink the Sea Eagles 36-18.

Brennan may still get the chop later in the year, with a review to be undertaken by Mal Meninga. But for now he can sit a little easier.


Big night in Brisbane the spur for Inglis seeking help

The sad and alarming tale of Greg Inglis going off the rails in Brisbane was apparently the catalyst for the recently retired star to seek help.

According to The Sunday Mail, Inglis “vanished” for three days as he went partying in the Queensland capital.

The ex-Souths star, who recently retired, had his girlfriend and Souths officials searching for him for days to no avail.

After being located, Inglis has now checked into a Sydney rehab clinic to deal with mental health and alcohol issues. We wish GI the best.

Knights on fire

Newcastle Knights are back in a big way after upsetting Sydney Roosters 36-12, for their fifth win in a row.

The Knights had been inconsistent early this year, but they have caught fire of late with the scalps of the Dragons, Bulldogs, Warriors, Eels and the chooks.

Again it was the classy pair of Mitchell Pearce and Kalyn Ponga leading the way. If their form holds it could well be the year of the Knight.

Segey situation

The NRL gaffed last weekend after it was revealed that James Segeyaro debuted for Brisbane even though he was unregistered.

Segeyaro made a big impact on debut, scoring the match-winning try against the Roosters, but he shouldn’t have played.

Under NRL rules, a player’s existing club must sign a clearance form in order to have a contract registered with a rival club.

According to News Limited, this wasn’t actually done until after the hooker debuted. Talk about a brain explosion.

Smith the GOAT

Cameron Smith walked out on Belmore Oval for his 500th first-class professional match as Melbourne Storm took on the Dogs.

Smith has played 395 NRL games and has 105 representative caps, for Queensland and Australia – an unbelievable record.

At 35 years old, he turns 36 next month, the hooker is still running rings around opponents almost half his age.

Enjoy Smith while you can because he is one of a kind, one of the greatest rugby league players ever. We may not ever see another player, as smart, durable and successful again.

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“This is borderline cheating”. The year was 1996 and this was my rather pathetic attempt at denigrating an umpire.

I knew that calling him an outright cheat would be going too far, so my aim was to plant the seed instead.

Fortunately they were different times back then and, as such, I escaped without a sanction. Certainly I wasn’t slugged with a $7500 fine like Dale Thomas was last week for calling a boundary umpire a cheat.

And with Dane Rampe receiving a $10,000 fine for saying an umpire talks like “a little girl”, I consider myself very lucky indeed.

Of all the conversations I had with umpires, it is the ‘cheating’ one that sticks out in my mind.

Maybe because it wasn’t purely a spur-of-the-moment comment and there was a bit of premeditation about it.

In those days the umpires followed a process when faced with abuse.

The mandated response was ‘What did you say?’ The rule basically gave you a free shot, as long as you weren’t personal or overly demonstrative.

The smart players said “Nothing or I wasn’t talking to you”. Only the dumb ones repeated it and suffered the consequences.

On this particular day my frustration boiled to the point where I wanted to verbally wound the umpire.

No one likes to be linked with cheating, so my plan was infer it rather than say it.

I got my point across without giving away a 50-metre penalty. However the ump had the last laugh because I didn’t receive a free for the remainder of the match.

Umpires used to have more empathy for players, and understanding it was an emotional game they let the players vent … to a degree.

It worked because most players knew exactly where the line was.

Then some bright spark in the AFL changed the rules and in 2001 rescinded the “What did you say?” concession.

Umpires were instructed not to talk to players and simply blow a whistle for 50 metres whenever they heard something they didn’t like. No correspondence would henceforth be entered into.

I discovered this the hard way in the first game of 2001. I backchatted and immediately gave away a 50-metre penalty.

St Kilda coach Malcolm Blight dragged me from the ground and then each time the opposition kicked a goal the phone would ring on the bench with a message: “That’s another goal you’ve caused”.

The phone kept ringing and after a while the boys on the bench would simply say “Burkey, that’s for you”.

We can now see that 2001 was the beginning of the end in the previous umpire-player relationship and it has been poor ever since.

Certainly it is a long way from great umpires like Peter Carey, who on more than one occasion told me to shut up and get a kick. He was often right, as when you are playing poorly you tend to whinge a lot more than when you are playing well.

On other occasions he would run past and tell you how clear you were from your opponent. They would even find you at a break and apologise when they missed a free kick.

The key word in the relationship was respect – not for merely being an umpire but because of the way they conducted themselves on the field.

They understood what we were going through and accommodated our outbursts. We also understood they were human and reciprocated the empathy.

We need to get rid of the live umpire microphones. If they ever say anything interesting then replay it.

Let the umpires and the players have an open and honest relationship without everything being dissected.

Do this and I guarantee you the mutual respect will return.

Nathan Burke is a former St Kilda captain who played 323 AFL games for the Saints, winning three Trevor Barker Awards as best-and-fairest player.  

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At least two high-profile tennis watchers say they’ll be missing petulant Australian Nick Kyrgios at this year’s French Open.

One is former champion Mats Wilander. The other is Cameron Norrie, the Briton that Kyrgios was meant to play in the first round.

Australian Kyrgios’s one-man circus act will be missing from Roland Garros for the second year running, sparing umpires, fans and even courtside chairs from the 24-year-old’s outbursts.

He recently forfeited his match at the Italian Open after launching a chair across the court in frustration – just the latest entry on his lengthy crime sheet.

For all his antics, however, Kyrgios remains one of the biggest draws in men’s tennis and seven-time grand slam champion Wilander believes he will be missed by fans and fellow players.

“Listen, as long as he is throwing chairs and breaks racquets because he has lost the first set 7-6 and dropped serve to go down in the second, as long as he’s pissed that he’s losing then he’s great for the game,” Wilander, 54, told Reuters.

“It’s like John McEnroe. At the time we didn’t know if it was good or bad but obviously he was one of the most important players that ever played the game.

“I just can’t handle it when it looks like he’s not trying or wants to be somewhere else.”

In Miami this year Kyrgios picked an argument with a fan and last week in a live social media post said the French Open “sucked” and that he hated clay.

He has also recently launched verbal volleys at the likes of Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal but Wilander says despite ruffling some feathers, Kyrgios is popular among his peers.

“The locker room loves him, but they hate losing to him,” Wilander said.

“The problem is that the more antics he does, the more trick shots, the more he irritates his opponent. He is going to have to fight through so many players because they will refuse to lose to someone doing that.

“When he gets angry with himself players then realise ‘Hey, this guy does care’. OK Nadal said a few things in Acapulco about him not respecting the game.

But the handshake with Nick is generally pretty like ‘I know what you’re going through but you are a good guy’. I think he’s a good guy deep down.”

For his part, Norrie knows he has a better chance of progress at the French Open but there is a part of him that is disappointed he will not be playing Kyrgios.

British No.2 Norrie will instead take on unknown French qualifier Elliot Benchetrit.

“I think it would have been pretty entertaining, for sure, but it would have been tough to focus,” said Norrie of taking on Kyrgios.

Casper Ruud, Kyrgios’s opponent in Rome, claimed the Australian should be banned for six months, but Norrie is broadly supportive of Kyrgios.

“I don’t agree with that at all. I think that was pretty harsh of him to celebrate how he did after getting a default when Nick could have easily turned up on the day and chopped him probably in straight sets,” Norrie said.

“I think he’s great. There’s endless things on Twitter about the way he’s acting and stuff. I’m not saying it’s correct, but I like that he’s his own person. I think he does attract a lot of fans and he is good for tennis in a way.”

Norrie arrived in Paris at a career high of 41 in the world rankings after some encouraging results on clay, including qualifying and reaching the second round in Rome.

The 23-year-old has been hitting milestones at a seriously impressive rate ever since turning professional two years ago and is now within touching distance of becoming the top-ranked British man.

-with AAP

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Fremantle forward Michael Walters has hit the post after the final siren to lift his side to a one-point AFL win over Brisbane at Optus Stadium.

The NSW Swifts have relegated the Melbourne Vixens to third and taken top spot on the Super Netball ladder for themselves after a convincing round five win.

The victory was their first in three years of the Super Netball competition over the Vixens, and they did it in style with a 60-50 scoreline.

The Swifts took maximum points in front of a packed Margaret Court Arena, overpowering the Vixens at every turn to collect a valuable eight points.

Without collecting even a bonus point, the former ladder leaders slipped down to third.

Vixens coach Simone McKinnis said she didn’t see their below-par performance coming.

“It was probably one of our better training weeks and I thought they were looking good and feeling good and well prepared but the Swifts are playing very good netball and we just didn’t match that,” McKinnis said.

Defending champions Sunshine Coast Lightning claimed second spot on the back of a commanding 72-61 win over Giants in their clash at USC Stadium, which was their fourth successive victory.

The Lightning trailed the Giants at halftime but set up the win with a stunning 25 goals in the third quarter with Peace Proscovia (43 goals from 48 attempts) helping herself to 20.

In other matches, West Coast Fever claimed their first win of the season with a 63-61 scoreline against Collingwood in Bendigo.

Adelaide cracked their first win since round one when they held off the Queensland Firebirds for a 54-51 victory at Priceline Stadium.

Already missing star shooter Romelda Aiken with an ankle problem, the winless Firebirds lost centre Mahalia Cassidy early in the match with what appeared to be a serious knee injury.

-AAP

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NSW Swifts have relegated the Melbourne Vixens to third and taken top spot on the Super Netball ladder for themselves after a convincing Round 5 win.

The victory was their first in three years of the Super Netball competition against the Vixens, and they did it in style with a 60-50 scoreline.

The Swifts took maximum points in front of a packed Margaret Court Arena, overpowering the Vixens at every turn to collect a valuable eight points.

Without collecting even a bonus point, the former ladder leaders slipped down to third.

Vixens coach Simone McKinnis said she didn’t see their below-par performance coming.

“It was probably one of our better training weeks and I thought they were looking good and feeling good and well prepared, but the Swifts are playing very good netball and we just didn’t match that,” McKinnis said.

Defending champions Sunshine Coast Lightning claimed second spot on the back of a commanding 72-61 win over Giants in their clash at USC Stadium, which was their fourth successive victory.

Lightning trailed the Giants at half-time but set up the win with a stunning 25 goals in the third quarter with Peace Proscovia (43 goals from 48 attempts) helping herself to 20.

In other matches, West Coast Fever claimed its first win of the season with a 63-61 scoreline against Collingwood in Bendigo.

Adelaide cracked its first win since Round 1 when the Thunderbirds held off Queensland Firebirds for a 54-51 victory at Priceline Stadium.

Already missing star shooter Romelda Aiken with an ankle problem, the winless Firebirds lost centre Mahalia Cassidy early in the match with what appeared to be a serious knee injury.

-AAP

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