Leeds Rhinos fought back to beat Halifax Panthers in the Wheelchair Super League Grand Final in Hull and secure their second title.
Rob Hawkins crossed twice as Halifax led 22-16 at the break, with two tries from Nathan Collins keeping the Rhinos firmly in the hunt.
Collins then set up two more quick tries to put Leeds back in front and, although Hawkins levelled, Josh Butler’s second-half hat-trick helped seal an emphatic win.
The victory completes a perfect season for the Rhinos after retaining the League Leaders’ Shield with eight wins from eight, and it takes them level with Halifax on two Super League crowns.
THE draw for the FA Cup first-round proper will take place on Monday night.
48 EFL clubs from League One and League Two begin their campaigns at this stage, alongside the 32 non-league teams who have progressed through qualifying.
Premier League and Championship sides will join the iconic competition from the third round stage in the new year.
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But before that, teams from the lower end of the footballing pyramid will battle it out in the first-round proper.
SunSport has all the information you need ahead of the huge draw.
When is FA Cup first-round draw?
The FA Cup first-round draw will take place on Monday, October 14.
The draw will take place from 7pm BST.
Bradford City’s Valley Parade will host proceedings.
What TV channel is the FA Cup first-round draw on and can it be live streamed FREE?
The FA Cup first-round draw will be broadcast live on BBC Two.
You can live stream the event for FREE on the BBC iPlayer website/app.
Alternatively, SunSport’s live blog will provide full coverage of the draw.
FA Cup first-round ball numbers
The ball numbers for the FA Cup first round are as follows:
1. Accrington Stanley 2. AFC Wimbledon 3. Barnsley 4. Barrow 5. Birmingham City 6. Blackpool 7. Bolton Wanderers 8. Bradford City 9. Bristol Rovers 10. Bromley 11. Burton Albion 12. Cambridge United 13. Carlisle United 14. Charlton Athletic 15. Cheltenham Town 16. Chesterfield 17. Colchester United 18. Crawley Town 19. Crewe Alexandra 20. Doncaster Rovers 21. Exeter City 22. Fleetwood Town 23. Gillingham 24. Grimsby Town 25. Harrogate Town 26. Huddersfield Town 27. Leyton Orient 28. Lincoln City 29. Mansfield Town 30. Milton Keynes Dons 31. Morecambe 32. Newport County 33. Northampton Town 34. Notts County 35. Peterborough United 36. Port Vale 37. Reading 38. Rotherham United 39. Salford City 40. Shrewsbury Town 41. Stevenage 42. Stockport County 43. Swindon Town 44. Tranmere Rovers 45. Walsall 46. Wigan Athletic 47. Wrexham 48. Wycombe Wanderers 49. Rushall Olympic or Peterborough Sports 50. Tamworth 51. Oldham Athletic 52. Hartlepool United or Brackley Town 53. Kettering Town 54. Altrincham or Solihull Moors 55. Rochdale 56. Scarborough Athletic 57. York City 58. Harborough Town 59. Curzon Ashton 60. Gainsborough Trinity or Boston United 61. Hednesford Town or Gateshead 62. Alfreton Town 63. Guiseley 64. Taunton Town or Maidenhead United 65. Horsham 66. Aldershot Town 67. Southend United 68. Sutton United 69. Boreham Wood 70. Weston Super Mare 71. Wealdstone 72. Dagenham & Redbridge 73. Barnet 74. Chesham United 75. Tonbridge Angels 76. Woking 77. Forest Green Rovers 78. Maidstone United 79. Worthing 80. Braintree Town
When will FA Cup first-round ties take place?
FA Cup first-round ties will take place between Friday, November 1 and Monday, November 4.
The UFC welterweight veteran was on a three-fight losing streak prior to his fight with Alex Morono this past Saturday at the UFC Apex. Fortunately for Rodriguez (18-5 MMA, 8-4 UFC), he was able to edge out Morono (24-11 MMA, 13-8 UFC) in a close, split decision.
“I worked so hard for this fight and for so long, you know,” Rodriguez said. “It feels great to be back in the win column.”
Some online were split on who had done enough to warrant getting their hand raised. Rodriguez felt he had a shaky start, but is confident with the3 work he put on rounds two and three.
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“I feel like this fight went a little tougher than I expected to, but hat’s off to him,” Rodriguez said. “He did a great job, and he was trying to knock my head off in that first round. I knew he was going to gas out, but I just stayed composed and used my veteran skills.”
Now back in the win column, Rodriguez is hoping to fight in his hometown. Nothing has yet been made official by the promotion, but Rodriguez said he’s heard that the UFC is planning an event for the “City of Angels” at the start of 2025.
“I hear that the UFC is coming to Los Angeles in January and me being an L.A. hometown boy I feel like it’s only right for them to put me on the card. So please UFC, put me on L.A.”
Former Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel fits the bill by Carsley’s measure but international management is a different matter from leading a club. Newcastle’s Eddie Howe is still mentioned, while any idea of luring Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola to St George’s Park is surely a dream, a fanciful one at that.
The questions and second-guessing will continue until this is cleared up once and for all. It has created an inertia which will only be solved by someone, perhaps the FA, showing their hand.
The received wisdom is the FA would like Carsley to be their man, continuing on the pathway – from St George’s Park to under-21 coach and then national coach – forged by Southgate.
At this stage, however, it appears they are no closer to putting a firm recruitment strategy in place.
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On whether he would like to carry on, Carsley repeated the lines consistently trotted out as he added: “I’ve not really thought much about it. I keep saying the same thing. My remit was six games and I’m happy with that.
“This is a privileged position. I’m really enjoying it but I didn’t enjoy the last two days. I’m not used to losing in an England team. I don’t take losing well.
“People are always going to try and put their chips on one side. I’m in the middle. My bosses have made it clear what they need from me.”
Carsley’s credentials to take England to the 2026 World Cup have taken a heavy hit since the victories against the Republic of Ireland and Finland in his opening two games. Just about everything about the 2-1 loss to Greece needs to be placed in the negative half of his ledger.
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He got his team selection horribly wrong, his front-loaded side stripped of a recognised striker were a tactical mess, and Carsley’s suggestion he would “hopefully” return to the under-21 job crowned a truly dismal, head-scratching night for all involved.
England won 3-1 in Finland. They had to win. Anything else was unthinkable against a gallant but limited side ranked 64th in the world and without a point in this Uefa Nations League Group B2.
And yet, for long periods, England were slow, sterile and ponderous, even with the lift of Jack Grealish’s early goal. The nerves would have been rattling had Finland striker Fredrik Jensen not spurned two big chances at 1-0, the second after the break a shocking miss when he somehow fired over the top with the goal at his mercy.
England made Finland pay with further goals from Trent Alexander-Arnold, used at left-back in another Carsley break from convention, and Declan Rice, but this was not enough to blow away the cobwebs left from the loss to Greece.
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Grealish continued his rejuvenation with a goal but it was not a good night for Chelsea’s Cole Palmer, marginalised on the right to little effect, with returning captain Harry Kane looking short of fitness.
It was better than Greece. It could not be worse.
England at least had a shape but they were making very hard work of seeing off Finland until Alexander-Arnold produced a very rare moment of quality with a brilliant free-kick from 25 yards.
They were flat for long periods, lacking tempo and fluency. It was not an impressive dispatch of such inferior opposition.
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A win is a win, though, and that is at least a small mercy at the end of a highly unsatisfactory week on and off the pitch.
In a parallel universe, Pierre Gasly is a professional football player often daydreaming about how far he could have gone in racing, if he had only continued his career in karting. In this universe, however, the French F1 driver every so often wonders if he could be playing for his favourite club, Paris Saint-Germain, had he made a different decision in his teenage years.
If you follow Pierre Gasly on Instagram, you know the 28 year old from Rouen is a huge fan of football. (“Don’t write ‘soccer’,” Gasly’s manager Guillaume Le Goff jokingly warned me.) The number on Gasly’s car, 10, is an homage to legendary French footballer Zinedine Zidane, who wore it for much of his international career. Gasly regularly strolls the paddock in football shirts, including Paris Saint-Germain’s and the French national team’s. He organizes matches played with Alpine colleagues to blow off steam after a long day at the track (they’ll play in a 30,000-seat stadium in Mexico City, Alpine’s press officer tells me). And in the ultimate fan move, Gasly became part owner of FC Versailles, a semi-pro club in France’s third-tier league, this past March.
Gasly started playing football at age 5. “I loved it,” he tells me with a huge smile on his face. “Honestly, I’m still dreaming about it. The sport itself, actually playing ball and being with my teammates. And the whole atmosphere of being with your team, going to places and challenging other teams from other cities. I loved every single moment of it.”
“Even this morning I was saying: I think the day that I retire from F1, I’ll enter a veteran team or an old men’s club just to play. Because it’s really a big, big passion of mine.”
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Before Alpine’s PR lead snatched Gasly’s ball and pulled him away for another interview, we talked about investing in a pro team, being forced to choose between his two loves as a teenager, and having a life outside Formula 1.
You told me once that you had a “good level” when you played football as a kid. What would you qualify as a “good level”?
Well, I clearly lost it! [Ed note: Gasly’s attempts to show off his football skills shortly before the interview did not quite rise to “a good level”.] But back then, I was good with the ball. We went to the French Cup and did well in the qualifiers for just a small club.
One day we went to the formation in Auxerre, which at the time was the winner of the French championship. And they had a very famous manager back then, Guy Roux, who I got to meet. And I got in the selection for the French academy.
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I always used to run a lot. I was a winger. Until 11 I was playing half pitch, and as a winger I was going from attack to defense, attack to defense. So, actually that was really good for me, because I built up a very, very good cardio. I was putting as much effort in karting as in football.
When you were 6 years old, you started karting as well. How did you manage football, karting, and school?
So when I was 6 or 7 — I can’t remember exactly — the school actually offered my parents [the opportunity] for me to jump a year, because I had very good grades and they estimated that I could go a year ahead of what I was. And I think my parents were quite smart to say: “Well, we rather want him to stick [to his current year] and have it easy at what he does now at school, because that will free more time for him to do sports.” I could dedicate the rest of my time to karting and football. And I could manage it pretty well.
When I started to do karting competitions at 9, then it started to become more complicated with football. When I was 10 or 11, I started to miss a few practices here and there. And because of the races, I couldn’t go to all of the games. I remember I came for a game on Sunday and the coach was not happy that I was focusing more on karting than on football. And he told me as a punishment he would put me in the second team. And I said: “Fuck that, I’m not playing for the second team.” And I just stopped on that day.
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That must have been a hard decision.
I said to myself: OK, I basically need to choose. But in my mind it was already clear. Even though they are my two biggest passions, my love for karting and racing was a touch bigger. And also, I think I was slightly more competitive in karting than in football — the first was bringing me more trophies. It got to a point where I could see I couldn’t do both at my best. And I wasn’t fine with that.
Are there any things you’ve learned in football that you benefit from in motorsport? You mentioned the cardio…
Cardio is definitely one. But also team spirit and being supportive of each other. In football sometimes you’ve got to make an extra effort to compensate for a teammate’s mistake. Or sometimes you do a mistake and then someone needs to have your back. And then, in the locker room, even if you are kids, you start building bonds between each other and you understand that your best games are actually the ones when there is a nice synergy between everyone.
To a bigger scale in F1, it’s the same, you know. When we are in the engineering room, it’s like a football locker room. The only difference is that everyone is dressed up in the engineering room. But also in Formula 1, you’ve got to get everyone together and very united as a team, and you’ve got to be very transparent and honest, and you’ve got to have everybody working towards the same target. So I think that team mentality was very good to have from a young age.
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Karting is more individual. At the time it was only my dad and myself. So you’re not really looking after a team behind you. But on Wednesday, I would go to a game or practice and then I’d be with other kids and I had to understand that I needed to fit in and have that team spirit.
And also, sport in general just brings that structure in your life. Like, practice is at six… you have to be there at six. You have to do every exercise, follow the process and do the practice to get better and stronger. So when you’re a kid — you don’t necessarily see it then — but it does bring some structure to your work, which is essential in whatever you do later on.
“I need more than just Formula 1 in my life to get me mentally balanced and in a happy place.”
Earlier this year you decided to invest in FC Versailles. How did that come about?
As a big football fan, I’ve always somehow wanted to be involved in the sport. Obviously, I wasn’t going to be involved as a player. But I always had in the back of my head that if one day an attractive offer would come up, I would find a way to be involved.
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The owner who took over FC Versailles last year reached out to me at the end of last year because he saw that I was so into football — that I was going to a lot of games and watching a lot of football. They explained to me their project, their vision for the club, and what they wanted to do and how. And then they asked me if I was keen on coming and joining them on this project.
Obviously, football is a very complex sport. But given my knowledge of my sport and my experience of working in a high performance environment, they were quite keen to understand the standards of F1 and how things work here, and somehow use some of that knowledge and introduce some of those standards at the club.
And as an athlete, I think this is also an area where I bring them a lot. I try to put myself in the player’s position. I can say: as an athlete, me personally, I need this and this and this to be looked after. Where, generally speaking, owners probably don’t look so much at those things. They probably look at it more as a business, so they sometimes miss a little bit of the player side of things. But when you know how you can extract the maximum out of the guys, that actually brings performance on the pitch. So it’s a lot of interesting conversations. And a different angle to football, which I didn’t have before but which I actually enjoy a lot.
I think value-wise, we really matched. I had a very good connection with the two other owners [Alexandre Mulliez and Fabien Lazare]. And then I was like, OK, that’s definitely a very attractive project. And more for the long term as well. I need more than just Formula 1 in my life to get me mentally balanced and in a happy place. And this is just something that I love following, besides Formula 1.
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Obviously, I’m not involved on a day-to-day basis, but every week we have a catch-up. And if they are playing, I watch the game. I’m very proud to be part of it.
Photo by: Michael Potts / Motorsport Images
What are your ambitions for FC Versailles? Can it be a success story like Wrexham A.F.C., which climbed from the fifth division in the English football league system to the third-tier League One?
I mean, we are in the third division. The target for the short term is to get into the second division, which is obviously very difficult because it’s very competitive. Football is so big, you have a lot of clubs with big budgets and big structures. So it’s a good challenge, but we’re not going to hide from it. For us, it’s clear that we want to get in that second division. And mid-to-long term, to get in the first division, which is a big jump that hopefully in a few years time we’ll be able to make.
Speaking of Wrexham: actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, who bought the club in 2020, joined the Alpine F1 team as investors last year. Did you seek their advice before investing in FC Versailles?
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No, but I clearly got inspired by that story with Ryan and Wrexham. As a football fan, I obviously followed his journey with Wrexham. It’s a similar type of story with me. [Football] is not my industry. And I’m going in with some other people who are not actually coming from football as well. And yeah, I’d love to have a Wrexham versus Versailles friendly game at some point!
Have you also considered making a documentary series about FC Versailles, like “Welcome to Wrexham”?
So that’s in the pipeline, because yeah — you need exposure, you need sponsors. The more money you have, the better infrastructure you have, the better performance you’ll get out of the guys. So we have to promote our team the best way possible. But to be fair, there is a great team looking after it and they’re doing a very good job. Hopefully the ambitions and the results can follow each other.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Clarke’s jaw appeared misshapen, with a large dent in his cheek, after Wardley’s shuddering right-hander finished the fight in just 2 mins 28 secs.
The British Boxing Board of Control’s chief medical officer, Neil Scott, insisted that the injury that he suffered was similar to that of being hit by a brick.
He revealed: “I’m a maxillofacial surgeon in the NHS and, typically, those kind of injuries are caused by bricks.
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“With the size of the glove it’s not something we see in boxing.
“It must be a tremendous amount of power to do that.”
Clarke’s promoter, Ben Shalom, revealed that the boxer is recovering well after undergoing surgery.
He added: “Frazer successfully underwent minor surgery.
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“He’s feeling well and rested and will head back to the UK this evening to further recover with his family.”
Wardley spoke to the media after the fight and insisted that he followed a “gameplan”.
He said: “I know that once I hurt someone, I can get rid of them.
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Fabio Wardley swaps jobs and holds pads for heavyweight trainer in Frazer Clarke rrmatch training session
“I had a few issues for the first fight but I got rid of them, had a gameplan and executed it.
“I learned enough from the first fight to know I had enough to beat him properly.
“I can’t help it, it’s my name; War by name War by nature.
“I want belts and titles next, these domestic ones are great but I want the ones that have ‘world’ written on them.”
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Wardley now races on to be considered a serious world title contender when the belts are carved up after the December 21 rematch between Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury.
Brandon Royval had the utmost confidence he would end Tatsuro Taira’s undefeated run in the UFC Fight Night 244 main event, and he ended up doing just that.
Royval (17-7 MMA, 7-3 UFC) showed an unbreakable level of determination in going grappling exchange for grappling exchange with Taira (16-1 MMA, 6-1 UFC) for all five rounds en route to a split decision victory at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas.
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After the fight, Royval called for a second crack at the flyweight championship and pointed to the strength of his resume, which includes several top names.
Will he get the shot at the winner of the newly-made title showdown between Alexandre Pantoja and Kai Asakura at UFC 310 on Dec. 7? Watch the video above for thoughts and analysis on Royval’s future after his UFC Fight Night 244 main event triumph.
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