The sight of line judges walking out on to court in their navy jackets, pinstriped shirts and white trousers or skirts has long been part of Wimbledon tradition. Many will miss the human touch, whether it is the official with the booming voice or the withering look from a player who disagrees with the call.

Being a line judge is not a full-time job, but the best officials could earn up to £200 a day plus expenses at Wimbledon.

They were selected on the strength of their work at lower tier events over the previous 12 months, with form in the grass court tournaments before Wimbledon likely to determine who ended up on Centre Court for the first couple of days.

Chair umpires will remain, but there will now be legitimate concerns about where the next generation of officials will come from.

Most British umpires started as line judges, and may have been given the opportunity to umpire qualifying matches while employed as a line judge at smaller events.

Will so many be interested in going down that career path if the carrot of officiating at Wimbledon is no longer available?

Players will intermittently complain about electronic line calling, but there has been consensus for a while that the technology is now more accurate and consistent than a human being.

“Machines don’t feel the pressure at five-all in the final set,” was the way one umpire put it.

A lot of these jobs will not disappear completely. Although there is money to be saved by the removal of line judges, there are now many new roles for video review officials.

And in the absence of line judges, match assistants are required on court to escort players to the bathroom or take their racquets to the stringer.

The Lawn Tennis Association, which is the governing body of tennis in the UK, said it “understands the reasons” behind the All England Club’s decision.

“We recognise the ongoing changes to officiating around the world,” it said.

“With this in mind we are already working with the Association of British Tennis Officials to understand the impact on the pathway for British officials and develop a new joint strategy with them that will ensure officials can be retained within the sport.”

Ghana will face Nigeria for a place at the 2024 African Nations Championship (CHAN) after the West African rivals were paired together at the qualifying draw on Wednesday.

The sides also met ahead of the 2022 finals, with Ghana qualifying via a penalty shoot-out following a 2-2 draw on aggregate.

The 42 entrants for the 2024 tournament, which is for domestic-based players on the continent, have been split into six regional zones.

Five of the zones will provide three qualifiers each but the Cecafa region has been handed a fourth space because Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda will all be involved in the preliminaries despite qualifying automatically as joint hosts.

The Confederation of African Football (Caf) says the team “achieving the best result in the Cecafa qualifiers” will advance.

As a result the finals, which will be held from 1-28 February next year, will feature 19 teams – an increase on the 18-team 2022 edition.

The format of the tournament is yet to be announced.

The two rounds of regional qualifiers will take place on a home-and-away basis, with the second round ending on 27-29 December.

Two-time winners Morocco, 2011 champions Tunisia and 2014 winners Libya are the only entrants from the North African region, so are all guaranteed a place at the finals.

CHAN holders Senegal will face either Sierra Leone or Liberia in the second round of qualifying.

Caf has increased the prize money from the previous edition by 60%, with the winners of the 2024 finals set to receive $2m (£1.53m).

The staging of the 2024 CHAN finals in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda is being seen as a test event before the East African neighbours host the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations.

WEST HAM have recruited the top lawyer who helped Leicester avoid a points deduction this season for Lucas Paqueta’s fight to avoid a life ban from football.

SunSport has learned that Nick De Marco KC has been appointed by West Ham as part of the club’s attempts to clear Paqueta of four counts of spot-fixing.

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De Marco scored a huge win over the Premier League this summer by persuading an independent panel that they had no right to charge Leicester with PSR breaches for the 2022/23 season, as they had been relegated to the Championship by the time they filed their accounts.

Leicester had been charged with a £24.4m breach of spending limits last season, which based on the punishments given to Everton and Nottingham Forest earlier this year would have resulted in the club being docked up to seven points if found guilty.

In a landmark ruling which left Premier League chiefs stunned last month however, an independent appeal board backed Leicester’s argument that the league should not have charged them.

De Marco has a history of big victories over the football authorities with West Ham hoping he can help clear Paqueta.

The 57-year-old barrister famously beat the Premier League in arbitration hearing to push through the Saudi Arabian purchase of Newcastle three years ago, and has helped both Sheffield Wednesday and Derby avoid and reduce points deductions from the EFL over spending breaches.

Paqueta has protested his innocence throughout since the FA began investigating suspicious betting patterns surrounding bookings he received whilst playing for West Ham the summer before last.

Following a nine-month investigation the Brazilian international was charged with counts of spot-fixing last May, with the FA accusing him of being deliberately booked in Premier League games against Leicester, Aston Villa, Leeds and Bournemouth between November 2022 and August 2023.

In addition the 27-year-old was charged with two breaches of FA Rule F3 for refusing to co-operate with their inquiries, which as SunSport revealed yesterday was the result of his decision to get rid of an old mobile phone which FA investigators had already spent eight weeks investigating.

The FOUR games Paqueta has been charged for

LUCAS PAQUETA has been charged by the FA over four specific games…

FIRST INCIDENT – West Ham 0-2 Leicester, 60th minute

The Brazilian was booked for lunging into Leicester’s Boubakary Soumare from behind.

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After initially playing the advantage, referee Jarred Gillett eventually pulled it back and brandished the yellow.

SECOND INCIDENT – West Ham 1-1 Aston Villa, 70th minute

 Four months later against Aston Villa Paqueta slid into John McGinn inside the centre circle, completely missing the ball and instead catching his legs.

THIRD INCIDENT – West Ham 3-1 Leeds, 65th minute

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At the end of the 2022-23 campaign against Leeds at the London Stadium Paqueta tripped Crysencio Summerville from behind.

The foul prevented the visitors from breaking on the counter attack.

FOURTH INCIDENT – Bournemouth 1-1 West Ham, 93rd minute

With just a few minutes remaining on the opening day of the season, Paqueta jumped up for an aerial challenge but instead handled the ball.

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The referee, who was standing directly in front of him, was quick to brandish the yellow.

Paqueta has his legal team led by London-based Level Law, but West Ham are supporting him and have moved to engage De Marco, who his regarded as best in class.

SunSport revealed on Sunday that Paqueta’s hearing is expected to take place next March, although a verdict is unlikely to be reached until the summer meaning he will be free to play for the rest of the season.

As previously revealed by SunSport, the FA are pushing for Paqueta to be banned for life, despite the fact that one of the bets placed on him to be booked was worth just £7.

Around sixty people in Brazil placed bets on Paqueta to be booked in the relevant games, with the stakes ranging from just £7 to £400, leading to combined winnings of £100,000.

Paqueta strongly denies any wrongdoing, but the ongoing case has affected his form at West Ham this season.

West Ham and De Marco were approached for comment.

LAS VEGAS – It was Artem Vakhitov’s former kickboxing rival who talked Dana White into signing him to the UFC.

Vakhitov (3-1) earned a UFC contract Tuesday when he scored a first-round TKO of Islem Masraf (3-1) at Dana White’s Contender Series 75 from the UFC Apex. White admits he was initially hesitant to sign former two-time Glory light heavyweight champion Vakhitov, the last man to defeat Alex Pereira in kickboxing, but “Poatan” convinced him.

“That’s why I’m so late. I’ve been back there talking to Alex this whole time,” White told reporters, including MMA Junkie, during a Dana White’s Contender Series 75 post-fight news conference. “He said, ‘Obviously, a little more clinching than you would expect.’ You would expect the other guy to clinch with him, not him clinching. But he said, ‘This is what I think. I think he’s talented enough. I think he deserves to be here. He’s had, obviously, a ton of fights in his career.’

“Which is what I thought, too, going in. He said, ‘I think that the Contender Series, no matter where you’ve fought or what you’ve done, puts a different type of pressure on you, and you might not perform the way you normally would.’ He thinks that this is a tremendous amount of pressure. He said, ‘All I know is I’m glad I never had to go through the Contender Series.’”

Vakhitov and Pereira split their two kickboxing appearances. Pereira won the first fight by split decision and Vakhitov avenged his loss in their rematch by majority decision.

White acknowledges that many fighters have noticed the success that former kickboxers Israel Adesanya and Alex Pereira have had in the UFC, and want to follow suit.

“What I actually think, like we were saying earlier, it’s fascinating how these guys that came out of this whole circuit with Israel and Alex, including them, are doing so well in the UFC,” White said. “It’s fascinating, so yeah, why not? I think it’s all of it. Obviously, those guys fought crazy fights that I’m sure they didn’t make any money. Joanna Jedrzejczyk and many others come over here, and it’s absolutely life changing for them.”

For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for DWCS 75.

Kapp and Brits might have joint top-scored against the Scots, but the consistent churn of runs by Wolvaardt took her past a significant milestone.

In her last six T20 World Cup innings Wolvaardt has made a score of 40 or more and is the leading runscorer in the tournament with 141 at 70.50. Her strike rate of 116.52 is not too shabby, either.

The South Africa captain was given an early let-off by Scotland when she was on two, though.

Wolvaardt chipped a full toss off the seventh ball of the match from Kathryn Bryce to Katherine Fraser at mid-off, who shelled a routine catch.

She went on to hit 40 off 27 balls, including a six off Scotland spinner Olivia Bell having skipped down the pitch and elegantly timing a lofted drive over long-on.

The knock moved her on to 1,906 runs in T20 internationals as she climbed above Lizelle Lee (1,896) and Dane van Niekerk (1,877) to become South Africa’s all-time leading runscorer in the format.

For Scotland, this tournament is a learning curve and after commendable displays in defeats to Bangladesh and West Indies this was a bit of a shellacking.

Doubtless the psychological boost from dismissing Wolvaardt for single figures would have lifted them in the field, even if South Africa’s bowlers would likely have still had too much.

Dricus du Plessis may not get his wish after all.

Du Plessis is the UFC’s first South African champion and even before he won the middleweight title, “Stillknocks” talked about bringing a UFC event to the continent. The talk only ramped up after claiming the title from Sean Strickland at UFC 297.

Everything reached a peak when ahead of du Plessis’s title defense against Israel Adesanya at UFC 305, UFC CEO Dana White promised that if the champion retained his title, the promotion would bring an event to South Africa next. Well, du Plessis did his job, submitting Adesanya in the fourth round of their fight, but he may not get what was promised.

“You know how bad I want this,” White told reporters after the most recent episode of Contender Series. “I’ve been trying to get this thing done. The arena situation there is tough. It’s tough to pull off. So that’s been the challenge with Africa as a whole. We’re trying to figure it out.

“The place that we would have to do it at is outdoors, and you know how I feel about that. So I’ve been trying to figure out the weather and one of the big things that I’ve been hearing out there is that wind is a big problem. We’ve done it a couple times, but anything that could affect the outcome of the fight makes me not even want to try. And it’s anything, from wind, rain, bugs, too much humidity. A lot of things can interfere with the fight.”

White has flirted with the idea of a UFC Africa card for years, dating back to the “Three African Kings” era when Adesanya, Francis Ngannou and Kamaru Usman all held UFC titles. The event never came to fruition though and now du Plessis is the promotion’s only African champion.

But while the future of UFC Africa remains in question for now, there’s one thing that is certain: du Plessis’s next opponent.

Despite a surge of new contenders in the middleweight division, and an upcoming bout between former champion Robert Whittaker and the highly popular Khamzat Chimaev set to take place at UFC 308, White confirmed that Strickland is next up for du Plessis, wherever the fight ends up happening.

“Yes, [Strickland is still next],” White said.

Du Plessis and Strickland fought for the middleweight title back at UFC 297 in January, with the South African winning a close split decision to take the belt. Since then, Strickland won a split decision over Paulo Costa to maintain his spot atop the middleweight rankings.