Cokayne, who earned her first full-time Red Roses contract in 2019, will be 29 when the World Cup takes place in England in August and September next year.

A 2020-21 top-flight champion with Harlequins, the Provost Officer in the Royal Air Force has seen the sport become one requiring players to “commit your entire life to it”.

“We joke that we only get five weeks off a year and it’s all in one block,” she said.

“When I go on holiday, say, with my friends, I’ve got to do a running session four times a week and a gym session.

“They ask ‘why do you do it? we’re on holiday.’ It’s those things that differ your life.

“I’m more than happy to do that at the minute – but whether I’ll be more than happy to do that when I’m in my mid-30s, I’m not so sure.”

Having won the top division of the inaugural WXV in New Zealand in 2023, Cokayne has just returned from repeating the triumph in Canada.

“It’s still really new and finding its feet but it was really good,” she said of the three-tier competition between national teams.

“As players, the more fixtures we can get against the best teams in the world, the better.

“There was a lot of jetlag during the first week back, for sure. I was still very much living on Canada time, for a while.

“It was a bit of a shock when I came back to the dark cold of Leicester that we’ve had.”

Francesco Bagnaia continued his fine form on Friday by topping the second practice session at MotoGP’s Malaysian Grand Prix.

The factory Ducati rider scored a psychological victory over points leader Jorge Martin (Pramac Ducati) by putting in a 1m57.679s lap at the end of the session, to which the Spaniard fell trying to respond.

Martin holds a 17-point lead in the championship, but Bagnaia’s Friday performance sets him up well to cut that gap over the weekend as he tries to snatch a third straight world championship. The Italian was quickest in both sessions on the opening day at Sepang, having also topped FP1 in the morning.

Martin led the way for much of the session and looked the favourite after setting the initial pace in the final push for times, but Bagnaia delivered when it really counted in the final minutes.

Despite his fall at Turn 1 immediately after Bagnaia had set his time, Martin ended up second-fastest, meaning both can safely focus on qualifying after booking their spots in Q2.

Bagnaia’s team-mate Enea Bastianini was third-fastest as the GP24s looked rapid at Sepang, while his rival for third place in the championship, Marc Marquez, only just snuck into Q2 with the 10th-fastest time.

Aprilia’s Maverick Vinales’s late effort was enough to put him fourth-fastest, with Gresini Ducati’s Alex Marquez fifth-quickest.

Yamaha was able to celebrate both its riders making it through to Q2, despite Fabio Quartararo having lost an engine in the morning. The 2021 world champion was sixth-fastest, with team-mate Alex Rins eighth.

Splitting the pair was Pramac Ducati’s Franco Morbidelli, whilst Jack Miller was sole KTM representative in the top 10 with ninth-fastest time.

The Austrian manufacturer’s rookie star Pedro Acosta will have to try to get into Q2 via the back door in Q1, as the Tech3 rider could only manage 11th-fastest behind Gresini’s Marc Marquez. Miller’s factory team-mate Brad Binder was always playing catch-up after a fall at the start of the session, and placed 14th.

Marco Bezzecchi was another to fall, dropping his VR46 at the final corner midway through the session. He wound up 12th-fastest for VR46, with Johann Zarco (LCR) the best of the Hondas in 13th.

Fabio di Giannantonio’s stand-in at VR46 Ducati, Andrea Iannone, was 1.939s off the ultimate pace in practice. He was ahead of only Miguel Oliveira’s substitute at Trackhouse Aprilia, Lorenzo Savadori in 21st place.

Photos from Malaysian GP Practice

Sporting CP manager Ruben Amorim will take over the reins at Manchester United after the Premier League side sacked Erik Ten Hag earlier this week. Amorim, 39, who is a legendary figure at the Lisbon club, has already said his goodbyes before moving to England.

Meanwhile, reports suggest that the Manchester United management is likely to give Amorim a free hand to deal with the current squad. They have identified three players who are not to be sold under any circumstances by the Portuguese manager. The three are Alejandro Garnacho, Rasmus Hojlund and Kobbie Mainoo.

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This means none of the senior stars including captain Bruno Fernandes or long-serving attacker Marcus Rashford are at risk of being benched or the worse. Another report, meanwhile, said that Amorim has decided on four players who he wants to offload at the earliest.

According to a news report, while Mainoo, Garnacho and Hojlund remain untouchable, Amorim is already in the process of discussing his tranfer market plans with the decision-makers at Old Trafford. He has identified four players who are not part of his project in the long run and won’t mind selling in the January window.

The four United stars that “don’t interest” Ruben Amorim are winger Antony, defender Victor Lindelof and midfielders Casemiro and Christian Eriksen.

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The Scandinavian duo of Lindelof and Eriksen can’t expect an extension once their contracts run out at the end of the current season, TEAMtalk said in a report. As for Brazilians Antony and Casemiro, both signed by Ten Hag, Amorim already have zeroed in on players to be their replacement, the report added. The club board are also of the opinion that the Latin American duo are not delivering consistently to justify their respective hefty wages.

32-year-old Eriksen was past his prime when he arrived at Old Trafford from Brentford. Lindelof, 30, has been serving the unpredictable United backline since arriving from Benfica in 2017. 

Casemiro, 32, a Real Madrid legend, has been not the “tank” he has been for the La Liga giants. Antony, who arrived from Ajax for £85m ($109m), has been one of the biggest flops in the recent history of the Red Devils. Often trolled by fans and rivals alike, a domestic violence case didn’t help the 24-year-old’s case either. 

Max Verstappen showed his most defiant side ahead of this weekend’s Brazilian Grand Prix, dishing out an acerbic comeback to those who criticised his driving.

Following a clash with title rival Lando Norris in Austin, which ended with a penalty for the McLaren driver, Verstappen took matters further in Mexico with two shoves in the space of four corners, racing his title rival about as hard as he raced Lewis Hamilton in 2021 to safeguard his championship lead with an inferior Red Bull.

Verstappen’s moves on Norris in Austin and particularly Mexico drew plenty of criticism from colleagues, fans and pundits alike, and inevitably he faced a barrage of questions on the subject on Thursday as the paddock gathered for its third consecutive race weekend, the events from Austin and Mexico still fresh and rumbling on.

His initial response in the FIA’s official press conference was one of acerbic wit mixed with indifference, clapping back that he had plenty of friends and family to the question whether he felt alone in F1, what with his uncompromising views on what hard racing should be. And he echoed prime Kimi Raikkonen – ‘Leave me alone, I know what to do’ – with his rebuttal of criticism from 1996 world champion Damon Hill on whether he knew what fair racing looked like.

Afterwards, in the less formal atmosphere of his session with Dutch-language journalists, Verstappen was even more defiant – ebullient even – cracking jokes over how he feels he has been treated. But while he delivered his own version of the facts with a wry smile, the undercurrent of the Dutchman feeling it was him against the rest of the world cut through.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

And for all his indifference to outside opinions and the media blackout he said he had imposed, he seemed pretty aware of what the likes of Hill and Johnny Herbert had said. He suggested pundits – predominantly British – had come out of the woodwork now that, following a near-flawless 2023 campaign, there was finally another stick to beat him with.

Not without merit, Verstappen labelled FIA steward Herbert airing his views through a gambling website as “pretty abnormal”. And he took offence to the former F1 driver’s suggestion that he elbowed Norris out of the way on purpose in Mexico so Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc could come through and deny Norris important championship points. Herbert is far from the only observer holding that opinion inside the F1 paddock. 

When jokingly asked if he should check if he had any British ancestry to escape the scrutiny, he grinned: “No… I don’t think I have that! I’m very happy with my passport, it’s just the wrong passport in this paddock. But it is what it is.”

An F1 veteran of 10 years now, at no point did Verstappen appear particularly agitated by the latest media storm, reiterating his desire to focus on Red Bull fixing its performance issues so he doesn’t have to be forcefully battling people in the first place. 

When asked if he took more satisfaction out of edging towards his fourth world title the hard way, he said: “No, last year was a lot better. My challenge last year was to try and win everything, now I’m just trying to win once. This isn’t as fun because our car isn’t as competitive.”

Verstappen’s relations with Norris also came up, with the pair’s friendship tested over their first clash in Austria. Norris and Verstappen said they hadn’t spoken to each other after disagreeing over their Mexican lucha libre bout, but according to Verstappen there is no need to.

Nothing personal. Just business.

“No, because we already cleared the air properly [in Silverstone, days after the Austria collision]” he said. “We both understand we’re fighting for the championship; we’re not going for a lap around the church. We always told each other we need to race each other hard, so not much has changed in that regard.

“You know what it is? Everyone on the circuit knows that even if you’re the best friends, if you’re fighting for the championship you are both going to go for it. You can either be best friends or hate each other, but what you do on the circuit stays the same.”

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, congratulates Pole man Lando Norris, McLaren F1 Team, in Parc Ferme

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

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That’s why Verstappen also saw no bones in Norris calling him a dangerous driver over the team radio, labelling it as an adrenaline-fuelled message aimed at his team and at race control more than anything else because drivers are “always trying to influence the stewards a little bit”.

Norris agreed there was no need to clear the air: “No, we’ve not spoken. I don’t think we need to. I’ve got nothing to say. I still have a lot of respect for Max and everything he does, not respect for what he did last weekend, but respect for him as a person, also what he’s achieved.

“But it’s not for me to speak to him. I’m not his teacher, I’m not his mentor or anything like that. Max knows what he has to do. He knows that he did wrong, deep down he does.”

Does he though? Verstappen still had issues with his first 10-second penalty for pushing Norris off at Turn 4, but he did agree he deserved his second 10-second penalty at Turn 7, brushing off his opportunistic lunge on Norris as “you win some, you lose some”.

But he has little time for the pile-on that followed, and what he perceived as bias against him. “Some people are just being very annoying, and I know who these people are. I don’t pay a lot of attention to them anyway, and I think I’ve got to this stage in my career with the right people supporting me and making my own decisions.

“Some people are just a bit biased – I get it. It’s fine. But it’s not my problem at the end of the day, I just continue with my life and keep performing.”

When asked if he felt like he had his back against the wall in the face of the intense scrutiny on him, Verstappen gave the most Max Verstappen answer possible.

“No. It there had been a wall I would have torn it down.”

MANCHESTER UNITED and Chelsea are among several clubs eyeing a future move for Real Madrid superstar Vinicius Jr, according to reports.

The Brazilian, 24, has had another stunning year in Spain, and was widely expected to win the Ballon d’Or before being pipped by Rodri.

1

Vinicius Jr remains under contract in the Spanish capital until 2027.

But according to Spanish outlet Relevo, the winger recently snubbed fresh contract talks – putting several clubs on alert.

Among his potential suitors are claimed to be Premier League duo Man Utd and Chelsea.

But both sides would face stiff competition, even if Real were to entertain selling their star man.

Also interested are French champions Paris Saint-Germain.

Real Madrid have a strained relationship with PSG chiefs, given their protracted pursuit of Kylian Mbappe over several years.

The Ligue 1 side would love to get back at Real Madrid by prising away Vinicius Jr in similar circumstances.

Real chiefs are said to be desperate to avoid this situation.

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Vinicius Jr also has significant interest in Saudi Arabia.

During the summer, the Public Investment Fund were claimed to have made an eye-watering proposal.

The deal would have seen Vinicius Jr sign for Al-Ahli, earning a staggering €1bn (£843.98m) across five seasons.

Real Madrid are determined to hold onto their star man long-term and are eager to demonstrate how much they value him.

But for now, contract talks remain on hold.

Vinicius Jr has won three LaLiga titles, two Champions Leagues, a Copa del Rey and two Club World Cups with Real Madrid.

Last season he scored 24 goals and laid on 11 assists in all competitions, with figures across his club preparing for him to win the Ballon d’Or.

He was said to be “devastated” after missing out – cancelling a huge party, with Real Madrid also snubbing the entire bash in solidarity.

Shohei Ohtani added the one major accomplishment that had eluded his already illustrious career on Wednesday night.

The two-way superstar won his first World Series title, helping the Los Angeles Dodgers take down the New York Yankees in five games. As Ohtani suffered a shoulder injury late in Game 2, he didn’t have his best showing at the plate in the Fall Classic. He went 2-for-19 (.105) at the plate, failing to register a home run or an RBI.

Of course, Ohtani was arguably the biggest reason why the Dodgers were even in the World Series to begin with. He became the first player in MLB history to record 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a regular season, making him the likely NL MVP winner. He also hit .364 with two homers in the Dodgers’ NLCS win over the New York Mets.

At 30, Ohtani has already built a strong case as one of the best players in MLB history. He’ll obviously have plenty of time to add to his case as well, and he’ll make his return to the mound in 2025 after rehabbing from elbow surgery he underwent in late 2023.

As Ohtani looks to add to his legacy, the future Hall of Famer actually mapped out his career when he was a high schooler in Japan. In the list, Ohtani wrote down each goal he’d like to accomplish at each age. The list included professional and personal goals, which could maybe serve as a guideline for what Ohtani still wants to accomplish in his career.

Here’s a complete look at Ohtani’s goal list:

• Age 18: Join an MLB team
• Age 19: Master English and reach AAA
• Age 20: Called up to the Majors, make 1.5 billion JPY (translates to $13 million in US)
• Age 21: Starting rotation, 16 wins
• Age 22: Win the Cy Young Award
• Age 23: Member of Japan WBC team
• Age 24: Throw a no-hitter and 25 wins
• Age 25: Throw fastest pitch in the world 175 kph (or 108 mph)
• Age 26: Win the World Series and get married
• Age 27: Member of Japan WBC team & MVP
• Age 28: 1st son is born
• Age 29: Throw 2nd no-hitter
• Age 30: Get most wins by a Japanese pitcher
• Age 31: 1st daughter is born
• Age 32: Win 2nd World Series
• Age 33: 2nd son is born
• Age 34: Win 3rd World Series
• Age 35: Member of Japan WBC team
• Age 36: Break the strikeout record?
• Age 37: 1st son starts baseball
• Age 38: Stats drop, start to think about retirement
• Age 39: Decide to retire at end of next season
• Age 40: Throw no-hitter in my very last game
• Age 41: Return to Japan
• Age 42: Introduce the American system to Japan?

So far, Ohtani has accomplished six of those items on the list. He made his MLB debut in 2018, checking off another goal when he earned $30 million in arbitration when he was with the Los Angeles Angels in 2023. He made Japan’s World Baseball Classic team in 2023, winning the MVP of the tournament with his two-way prowess helping his native country beat the USA in the final.

Ohtani was a few years off on when he would win his first World Series, predicting he’d win it as a 26-year-old in 2020. However, he was correct that he would win the World Series within a year of getting married, as he wedded Japanese basketball player Mamiko Tanaka ahead of the 2024 offseason. 

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Even though most of the records Ohtani has made have come at the plate or on the basepaths, many of his individual goals list were focused on the mound. He rose to prominence in high school due to his pitching ability, throwing the fastest pitch ever for a Japanese high schooler at 99 mph. 

As Ohtani prepares to return to the mound in 2025, some of those pitching goals seem obtainable while some of them might be a bit out of reach. His career-high in wins is 15, which he accomplished in 2022. So, 16+ wins in a season seems doable. But 25 wins in a season is probably unlikely, as former Athletics pitcher Bob Welch was the last pitcher to reach that number, doing so in 1990. 

Throwing a 108 mph pitch is also probably unlikely to happen. He threw a 102 mph pitch during the 2023 World Baseball Classic, which was the fastest pitch he’s ever recorded. For perspective, the fastest pitch ever recorded in the modern era belongs to a 105.8 mph fastball from Aroldis Chapman in 2010. Ohtani’s former Angels teammate Ben Joyce is one of the few who has even come close, firing a 105.5 mph pitch in September.

Ohtani will almost certainly not set the strikeout record, either, especially if he plans to retire at 40. He’s recorded 608 career strikeouts, which is 5,000 fewer than Nolan Ryan’s record (5,714). Ryan played for an MLB record 27 years. 

A few of the other pitching goals seem plausible, though. If Ohtani averaged roughly nine wins per season over the next 10 years, he’d break Hideo Nomo’s record for most wins ever by a Japanese pitcher (123). He finished fourth in the AL Cy Young vote in 2022, showing he has the upside to possibly win the award. Ohtani has only thrown one complete-game shutout in his career, but he only allowed one hit in that start. So, he’s already come within reach of pitching a no-hitter.

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Of course, the other professional goals that Ohtani had on his list were to win a second and third World Series title. He seemed to amend those goals following the Dodgers’ World Series victory on Wednesday.

“In his first year [with the Dodgers], he won a championship,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman told reporters of Ohtani. “He’s like, ‘This is easy. We’re just gonna do it again nine more times.’”

As Friedman is referring to, Ohtani still has nine seasons remaining on the 10-year, $700 million contract he signed with the Dodgers last offseason. If Ohtani miraculously wins a title in each season remaining on his contract, it won’t matter if he accomplishes the individual goals on his list. He’d almost certainly be viewed as the best player in baseball history if he won 10 titles in a row. 

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