Jason Pritchard has won the Protyre Motorsport UK Asphalt Rally Championship title for a third time in a row after scoring maximum points on the final round, the Ford Parts Cheviot Stages Rally.

Of all the strange revelations given to Cardiff City supporters groups last weekend in a meeting with chairman Mehmet Dalman, surely the least surprising was that owner Vincent Tan has a preference for “a direct style of football.” Of course, he does. This is a man, lest we forget, who told the players when he met them back in 2016 to “shoot more”. Providing secretly mined data previously unknown to club coaches and analysts throughout European football, the Malaysian billionaire said: “If you shoot 30 times you’ll get three goals, 40 times will be four goals, 50 times and you’ll get five goals.

Dai Young branded the decision to send off Ray Lee-Lo a “harsh” call but still heaped praise on his Cardiff team after they held off the derby challenge of the Dragons. The club’s director of rugby saw Le-Lo shown a red card for a high tackle on Sam Davies before Cardiff clung on for a 31-29 victory. It moved them up to seventh spot in the United Rugby Championship, with the Ospreys ahead of them in fifth and both the Scarlets and Dragons in the bottom half of the table.

Finally finding a way to beat the All Blacks after 68 years of heartache is all in the mind according to Wales’ most capped scrum half, Mike Phillips. Wayne Pivac’s Welsh side take on New Zealand in the opening game of their Autumn International Series on Saturday with the head coach already having hit the warning light by telling fans to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. You have to go back to 1953 for the last time Wales managed to beat one of their biggest rivals. Since then it has been one-way traffic with the Kiwis winning 31 in a row.

Chris Wilder has been installed as the bookies’ favourite to become the next manager of Cardiff City following the sacking of Mick McCarthy. The 54-year-old Wilder has not taken up a new managerial role since leaving Sheffield United in March, when the club were bottom of the Premier League. Middlesbrough’s 2-0 win over Cardiff on Saturday spelt the end for McCarthy, who had suffered a club record eight straight defeats.

Under fire Cardiff City boss Mick McCarthy admitted he rang up Steve Bruce before his 1,000th game as a manger because he wanted “to speak to someone who is feeling worse than me”. For Bruce it was 1,000 and out after the 3-2 home defeat for Newcastle United against Spurs and McCarthy could well follow him onto the dole queue if his side suffers an eighth successive defeat to Middlesbrough on Saturday. “I spoke to Steve the week before and I actually rang him because I thought I’d find someone who is feeling worse than me. He was top of my list,” said McCarthy.

The top end of the Swansea Valley has been a hotbed breeding ground for sporting talent for years. Bleddyn Bowen, Robert Jones, Greg Thomas, Justin Tipuric and Ben Davies are just some of the stars the local schools have honed in various sports. The current crop isn’t bad, either – Wales and Cardiff City footballer Rubin Colwill and Ospreys centre Joe Hawkins, who plays against Munster on Saturday night, and who spoke to Graham Thomas. Joe Hawkins is keen to follow his old football rival Rubin Colwill onto the full international stage, but is happy to bide his time. Ospreys centre Hawkins and fellow 19-year-old Colwill – already a senior Wales football international after a breakthrough year at Cardiff City – used to play football against each other as 15-year-olds, until Hawkins gave his sole attention to rugby.

Brinn Bevan said he had “mixed emotions” after marking his return to gymnastics’ world stage. Wales’ 2016 Olympian was back competing for Great Britain at the 2021 Artistic World Championships in Kitakyushu, Japan alongside fellow Wales Commonwealth Games contender Joe Cemlyn-Jones – who was making his debut at a major championship. It was the first time since 1987 that Wales had two senior men’s artistic gymnasts in the Great Britain team in the same year for an Artistic World Championships.

By Lucy Rees Wales manager Gemma Grainger has warned her players Slovenia could be the dark horses of their World Cup group. Grainger heads into a tougher World Cup qualifying match in Lendava on Friday night after two successful results last month against Kazakhstan and Estonia. However, Slovenia could prove a far more difficult contest […]

Neil Warnock has told angry Cardiff City fans: “Be careful what you wish for.” The Bluebirds’ former manager returns to his old club for the first time with fans in the ground since he was sacked almost two years ago. Warnock brings his Middlesbrough side to the Welsh capital with many home fans having regularly called for current boss Mick McCarthy to be fired.

Welsh golfers Archie Davies and Ffion Tyan are currently in the USA, learning their craft in the most demanding competitions in the world for prospective professional golfers – the American collegiate system. Their progress is proof that the future of elite golf in Wales is in good hands with those players acting as role models for the grass roots, as Tom Prosser reports. Jamie Donaldson was the last Welshman to represent Europe at a Ryder Cup back in 2014, but with a new winning mindset introduced by Golf Wales, hopes are high that the next Welsh golfing star may be just around the corner. Gillian O’Leary – director of performance for Golf Wales – says one of her biggest tasks since swapping her native Ireland for Wales has been to change the mindset of some of the golfers she works with.   

By Lucy Rees Sophie Ingle’s team sit second in the Group I table after two wins over Kazakhstan and Estonia last month, but preparations are well underway as they take on Slovenia on Friday night, in their 200th match and Estonia on Tuesday, hopefully in front of a big crowd. The women’s World Cup qualifying […]

By Tom Prosser Cardiff City lost their seventh straight league game last night away to Fulham and manager Mick McCarthy admitted that his future at the club is in serious doubt. The defeat marked the Bluebirds worst run of form since 1933. “It leaves me on the back end of a really horrible run of results,” said McCarthy. “And if football is true to its usual stuff then we know what happens.

Russell Martin insists there is still much more to come from Swansea City after the head coach lavished more praise on match-winning pair Joel Piroe and Jamie Paterson. Both players scored for the second successive game as the Swans beat high-flying West Bromwich Albion on Wednesday night to make it back-to-back victories in the Championship for the first time this season. The 2-1 victory – achieved after Martin’s side had fallen a goal down inside the opening minute – has lifted the club up to 15th place, four points off the play-off spots.

By Paul Jones Under-fire Cardiff City boss Mick McCarthy will be hoping to halt an alarming run of six straight Championship defeats, when his side travel to Craven Cottage to face third place Fulham this evening (Wednesday). This is Cardiff’s worst league return since 1985 and the fans are stunned that the veteran boss is yet to receive his marching orders. Former Cardiff players, Bobby Decordova-Reid and Harry Wilson now play their football at Fulham and could inflict further pain on their former club tonight.

Wales’ male and female national football and rugby teams are all in advance preparations for vital matches this autumn. That’s four head coaches, plus various assistants who are working to give their players an edge. Often though, coaching inspiration and innovation needs to come from elsewhere, which is where the Welsh coaching network comes in, […]

Joel Piroe plans to add to his Welsh derby goal with another at home to West Brom on Wednesday night to provide more updates for his next chat with Ruud van Nistelrooy. The Swans’ young Dutch striker – who has already been compared to a rookie Van Nistelrooy – still has one of the greatest Premier League strikers of his generation on speed dial, even though they stopped working together directly when Piroe left PSV Eindhoven this summer. Former Manchester United star Van Nistelrooy is now a coach at the Dutch club where he made his name and took a hand in shaping Piroe’s progress.

By Lucy Rees Wales have launched their new kit for the coming international rugby season, which they insist is “green” because of its environmentally friendly credentials. The new Macron kit is 100% green, in spirit at least. Wales has played in red since the first international in 1881, and that isn’t changing as ‘green’ is just […]

By Alex Bywater Cardiff Rugby and Wales full-back Hallam Amos caused a shock last week when he announced he was retiring from professional rugby at the end of the season aged just 27. Amos has been studying to become a doctor alongside his career at the highest end of the sport but will call it quits on his on-the-field career come the summer. Amos won 25 caps for Wales scoring six tries and he featured in two Rugby World Cups in 2015 and 2019 after making his debut against Uruguay in Cardiff in the first of those two tournaments.

Newly appointed Newport County manager James Rowberry could end up working alongside current caretaker boss Wayne Hatswell. County’s dramatic 2-2 draw at home to Carlisle on Tuesday night was the last match in charge for Hatswell, who stepped up after the resignation of Michael Flynn at the start of the month. Flynn’s former assistant is in talks about whether to stay on as Rowberry’s assistant after the Cardiff City  coach was confirmed as County’s new boss just before the game.