Supersport's Good Week / Bad Week: Alien blood?

Good week for:

Alien blood?
They know what's important over at the Japanese Golf Tour. The official website details players' birthplace, birthdate, height and weight. Crucially it also tells you what blood type they are. If we ever find New Zealand's own David Smail unconscious and bleeding, it's good to know to jack up a type-O transfusion. Scarily, Tiger Woods' blood type is not listed.

Stink luck, John
John Hopoate's preparations for his short-lived bout against Oliver McCaw were apparently disrupted by an earthquake. Hopoate's presence in the intercontinental heavyweight title fight was itself disrupted by a couple of walloping great right-handers, measuring about four on the Richter scale, from the former world champ.

Byword for bounced
On the subject of boxing, SuperShorts has spent a long time trying to come up with a name for a fictional pub brawler who steps into the ring and gets his lights switched out by a footy player turned first-time slugger. We can't come up with anything better than Gary Gurr.

Good grief
SuperShorts hates to sound like a latte-slurping, muesli-munching, Grey Lynn-dwelling, liberal wowser, but events of recent weeks have left us wondering what the hell is in the water over in Oz. Never mind that murky business at Cronulla, our politically correct jaw was dropped by ABC radio Aussie Rules commentator Ken Judge who, while talking about the subject of chubby players, told his fellow announcer John Dorotich: "You're bigger than Hitler's last gas bill."

Mr Judge, get thee to Cronulla!

Sharkwatch
Good news, Warriors fans: You don't support Cronulla.

Toonwatch
We sometimes get accused of laughing at the misfortune of others. So rather than giggle at Newcastle's demise, let's just applaud Sunderland's magnificent week. Snigger.

Bad week for:

Double booking
Stan Kroenke has angered the wrong man. As owner of the NBA's Denver Nuggets, Kroenke agreed last August to rent out their arena for a World Wrestling Entertainment fiesta. Kroenke can't have had high hopes for the Nuggets - who made the Western Conference final. Now they're double booked with the WWE bouts and Vince McMahon, the owner of the WWE, has a novel solution to the scheduling mishap: He's challenged Kroenke to a cage fight.

Jack-up fears
Remember the bad old days when we Kiwis were afraid of refereeing jack-ups over on the Highveld? We've come a long way, and we're eagerly looking forward to Sunday morning's show of unbiased officialdom from Saffer whistleblower Jonathan Kaplan and his mates Craig Joubert, Cobus Wessels and Johann Meuwesen. SuperSport doesn't fear a jack-up ... nope, not at all.

Andre 80,000
Andrei Arshavin has asked Arsenal for a pay rise after less than six months at the club. The Russian earns £80,000 ($207,770) a week but has asked for a pay rise, because he didn't understand how the tax system works and so takes home less than he had banked on. "I have a problem with my contract. Certain nuances emerged linked to taxation and some other things," says the Russian, who paid a flat rate of 13 per cent in his days as a Muscovite. "My agent is taking care of it. My advice to other Russian players who may move to England is to take contract matters more seriously."

Bottoms up
It's been a bad week to be a boozing sports team abroad. The gentlemen of England's Hanham Athletic Football Club spent 40 hours in a Greek prison charged with "causing a scandal by provocative acts and misrepresenting a uniform". Their annual end-of-season trip involved a tour of bars in Crete while dressed in nuns' habits and waving crucifixes.

Mick Underhill, the chairman of the division four club in the Bristol and District League, said the Greek police overreacted: "We hadn't even finished our first drink when we were arrested and put in the back of a van."