By CHRIS LARKIN With Rugby Union's blood gate incident taking up the majority of Sky Sports' time I was relieved to see Football back as the main focus point of the channel and was shocked to see that Chelsea had been ban from making any transfers until January 2011.

I do have sympathy towards Chelsea's case in the way they appear to be singled out but if I'm quite honest I find it hard to actually feel sorry for teams when so many Stockport County players have been poached over the years for pittance, it's disgraceful we spend time and money training quality players that could get County to the next level and then get sold on for alot of money but the ‘bigger' clubs always come in and coax the naive kids into coming to the bigger team, when in actual fact all it does if deprive County of a player that could've really helped us and in many cases will ruin the players career.

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Do you want to win £50 just for sharing your thoughts on the passion that consumes you every day?

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The competition is open to articles written about football, rugby (union and league), cricket and tennis with a £50 prize available for the best article written about each sport.

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They Think It's All Over... is knackered and can't write anything. Happily, he has a freshly published Salient article for your reading pleasure... Click to continue reading...

by Usman Azad, Football Perth Editor
SO it's Tuesday and we are fast approaching Perth Glory's next match against Melbourne Victory on Friday night.
There's been a tinsy-whinsy bit of confusion on the times for the clash and FP may have found out why.
In the original fixture list released by the FFA, the game was going to be played on Saturday instead of Friday. Click to continue reading...

The news that Melbourne Victory are set to bid for a Super 15 Rugby Union licence makes so much sense to me.
AFL and Football should create two teams, one club in West Sydney, and of course the Brumbies one of the countries smartest business teams are missing a huge opportunity by not bidding for the A-League4Canberra licence. Click to continue reading...

Three of the four pitches which will be used for the Confederations Cup-- Ellis Park in Johannesburg, Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria and the Free State Stadium in Bloemfontein -- are usually used for the SA rugby union.
It left football officials with little time for "transformation" as sponsors' logos and pitch markings had to disappear.

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Things are not looking good for Irish sports broadcaster, Setanta, after it emerged the company are in debt to the Premier League, by £30 million, meaning inevitably they are now trying to escape the desperate clutches of administration.

As well as it's debt to the English PL, Setanta have also failed to pay the Scottish Premier League £3 million in television rights money.

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AFL, Rugby Union and the relatively poor Rugby League stars can only dream of the sort of reward footballers get for playing their game.
Harry Kewell, Lucas Neill, Tim Cahill and Mark Schwarzer, can expect up to $2 million in sponsorships prior to the World Cup, according to the World Game website today. Click to continue reading...

Great to see a plan for a 26,5000 stadium, a football stadium, one with real atmosphere, close to the pitch, built for the future here in little old Canberra
And isn't it great to see a World Cup bid, unlike the 2000 Sydney Olympics, which will leave a legacy for football.
From the Canberra Times:

The second rectangular stadium would be purpose-built for soccer, rugby league and rugby union.

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New strip out today, made local ABC TV - Sergio and Reinaldo as models. Orange home shirt with maroon shoulder tops. OK, where do I get one.
Lots of interest in the Celtic game. Expect a sell out.
And on that Miron is saying why isn't State Govt paying for Fulham game. Old spinner Miron is missing the point. Click to continue reading...

The players who took football in the community a bit too far 1. Joey Barton The Newcastle midfielder (for now at least) continued to clock up the 200 hours of community service he was given for assaulting former Manchester City team-mates Ousmane Dabo. He spent four hours cleaning up Newcastle Falcons rugby union ground 2. Click to continue reading...

Imagine if you were a Company and you had this many people from one city who used your product every week guaranteed:
30,000 people made up of:
12,000 aged 3-18 primary users
5,000 aged 19-90 primary users
13,000 18-90 secondary users..over 50% female.)
Imagine you could guarantee that these customers would stay with you for 20 years. Click to continue reading...

div align="center"strongMost watched PAY TV program ever! /strong/divstrong/strongdiv align="left"br /So the Socceroos are off to another World Cup...and Canberra's A-League bid can only benefit...br /span id="fullpost"br /There have been a few doubters, naysayers and general moaners when it comes to the prospect of an A-League side in Canberra. Click to continue reading...

One of the chaps over on the Rolling Maul National League Rugby Union Forum post this link which gives absolutely superb information on Rugby Union results & stats.
Extremely useful because the information isn't always available for very long....in the case of Waterloo, however, it might be better if the data was just locked in a vault somewhere where no-one can ever find it. Click to continue reading...

Plans for a Rugby Union championship gaining momentum
"Members of the Rugby Football Union's council have backed setting up a new professional 12-team Championship to replace National League One.
Earlier the umbrella body for National League One clubs, First Division Rugby, had called the prospect of the new championship "financial suicide". Click to continue reading...