Sports News 12:30

BULLETIN SPORTS NEWS 24 March 12:30 pm

Good day, let’s look at the latest sports news and scores:

# We start with rugby: New Zealand head coach, Dave Rennie, has confirmed his assistant coaching group and Head of Performance to take the team through to the 2027 Men’s Rugby World Cup. Neil Barnes has been appointed as the senior assistant coach, Jason Ryan is the forwards coach, Mike Blair is the attack coach, and Tana Umaga is the defence coach. Head of Performance is Phil Healey. Barnes, one of New Zealand’s most experienced coaches, says it is an honour and a huge challenge to be appointed:

# Golf: Tiger Woods will return to competitive golf, minus most of the walking, when he tees it up for Jupiter Links Golf Club on the last night of the TGL indoor finals in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. The best-of-three set concludes tonight with the second and decisive match. Woods has been serving as an adviser and unofficial cheerleader for his TGL team while working his way back from lumbar disk replacement surgery in October and a Achilles tendon rupture that occurred last spring.

# Athletics: Olympic champion Sifan Hassan has withdrawn from next month’s London Marathon with an Achilles injury. The Dutch runner, who took gold over the distance at the 2024 Paris Games, picked up the injury while training on a treadmill. The Ethiopia-born Hassan won the five-thousand metres and ten-thousand metres at the Tokyo Olympics. He says he had hoped the injury would settle, but as training progressed, it became clear that he wasn’t able to prepare at the level he expected from himself.

# Cricket: England captain Ben Stokes says the current leadership group, led by coach Brendon McCullum have the necessary passion and desire to take the team forward. This comes after the England and Wales Cricket Board determined that coach Stokes, McCullum, and managing director Rob Key will remain in their roles following a review of the dismal Ashes series against Australia. Stokes says the last three months have been the hardest period of his captaincy journey. He has admitted to making mistakes but says he still has so much to give.

# And, soccer: Sevilla announced on Monday the sacking of their coach Matias Almeyda, as the seven-time Europa League champions find themselves floundering in 15th place in LaLiga. The Andalusian club, who are three points above the relegation zone, issued a brief statement thanking the 52-year-old former Argentina international, who had only arrived in Seville last July.  The statement made no mention of a replacement or a potential interim coach. Almeyda, who began his coaching career at River Plate in 2011, managed AEK Athens from 2022 to 2025 before being appointed by Sevilla on a three-year contract.

Stay tuned for more news………….