Supershorts: Stay classy, All Whites

Comedy gold as Japan's AC Milan midfielder Keisuke Honda slices through the All Whites' defenders. Photo / AP

Soccer becomes comedy fest, lights go on at the Rebels and recalling a shocking trade

If you're looking for a bit of comedy value, there's nothing we at SuperShorts can offer you that will beat the first 17 minutes of the All Whites v Japan from Tokyo. The only way it could have been any funnier, was if Anchorman Ron Burgundy was playing in the back four.

Cardiff boss on ran-Tan

There's a bit of comedy in the Premier League, too, with Cardiff's controversial owner Vincent Tan reportedly gatecrashing a team meeting ahead of the clash against Tottenham, beseeching his players to shoot more in order to score more goals. He also offered a 3.7 million ($7.3 million) bonus to be shared among the players if they avoided relegation. This is the same Tan who has endeared himself to the people of Cardiff by changing the shirt colour from blue to red, rendering their Bluebirds nickname and crest a little redundant, and sacked popular manager Malky Mackay. Oh, and he sacked Iain Moody, the head of recruitment, and replaced him with Kazakh Alisher Apsalyamov, a 23-year-old employee whose previous job had been as an intern helping paint the stadium. Apsalyamov is a friend of Tan's son.

Enlightenment at Rebels

Super Rugby side the Rebels have been a hard sell to the people of Melbourne, fed a protein-rich diet of AFL and, as a side dish, one of the most successful NRL teams in modern history. But don't worry, new CEO Rob Clarke has a plan. But first, a few gems from his interview with The Age: "Rugby must look beyond the male, pale and stale audience. The whole game needs new thinking. We need to be prepared to be a bit courageous ... we need to be prepared to stick our heads up knowing that they're going to get hit by a few people."

So what does Clarke propose to do? He's looked into having the goalposts light up after successful kicks.

Yep, that should do the trick.

And the winner is ...

A bit of a shemozzle during prizegiving at the New Zealand Open golf tournament at The Hills, near Queenstown, last weekend, apparently. No one had written down the name of the Bledisloe Cup (leading amateur), winner, leaving a red-faced announcer to ask the unnamed winner to step forward. The winner was Jordan Bakermans, from Christ-church, who failed to make the cut but his 75 at Millbrook and 74 at The Hills was enough to take the trophy.

First wives club

Wednesday marked the 41st anniversary of the second-most shocking trade in baseball history (Babe Ruth from the Red Sox to the Yankees will remain numero uno for eternity). It's the day Yankees' pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson called a press conference to announce they were not just swapping wives, but families, including pets.

"Don't make anything sordid out of this," said the then-31-year-old Peterson, who was then living with Kekich's wife, Susanne. The 27-year-old Kekich agreed. "Don't say this was wife-swapping, because it wasn't," Kekich said. "We didn't swap wives, we swapped lives." The trade went better for Peterson, who married Susanne. Kekich and Marilyn Peterson split up after a brief romance.

It is rumoured that movie star Ben Affleck, his brother Casey and Matt Damon - all manic Boston Red Sox supporters - are making a movie about the trade.

Save some bucks for a cab

From Sports Illustrated's Chris Mannix comes the heartwarming tale of Milwaukee Bucks' basketball rookie Giannis Antetokounmpo.

One day he took a cab to Western Union so he could send money back home to Greece. When he had done so, he realised he didn't have any money left to pay for a cab. It was game day. He started running.

After about 1,500m, a couple driving by pulled over and asked him if he was the Bucks' player. He said yes. They dropped him off at the arena in the nick of time.