Snooker???

Snooker is not a sport that is heavily featured on this blog (this is the first) but one that certainly deserves a mention. Anyway, Saturday saw the start of the UK Championship, held in Telford (not exactly Wembley or Wimbledon, but it does the job), and we're already into the second round. Today sees the second round matches of Ronnie O'Sullivan vs. Peter Ebdon, and Shaun Murphy vs. Ding Junhui.


You can view the current scores, or even watch the matches on the BBC Sport website.

Uni Work - Radio

Another week, another uni project. This time we're continuing with radio! We had to write news scripts for radio and record them, and here is the recording! It's pretty good but to be perfectly honest, I'm not good at it. See for yourself. I'm the second voice on the recording and it took a while to edit out the mistakes, voice breaks (yes voice breaks) and coughing. Enjoy!


Radio Work by mattmansfield

Oh yeah. If you want to download it for free (cos you're gonna wanna), click the down arrow on the player.

England Lead Series After Emphatic Win

England's One Day tour of South Africa has taken a major step forward, with an incredible bowling performance from James Anderson, giving England a 2-1 lead with one game to go.


England bowled South Africa out for 119, with 13 overs left to go. In reply, England got up to 121-3, with 19 overs remaining.


James Anderson finished with bowling figures of 5-23, his best ever in one day cricket, and a very economical spell from Tim Bresnan, who took 1 wicket from his 8 overs, going for only 15 runs.


There was also a good batting performance from the ever prolific Jonathan Trott, who scored an unbeaten 52, with Strauss and Morgan also contributing, with 32 and 28 not out respectively.


View Pictures from the match, and view the Scorecard by clicking on the links.

ATP Tennis Finals - Davydenko Destroys Del Potro

There was a big surprise for Tennis fans in London on Sunday, with the 8 best male tennis players in the world this year competing in a tournament to see who is the best of the best. and the winner was not who you might think.

With Murray, Djokovic and Nadal leaving the competition, held at the O2 arena, in the group stages, the competition was wide open. And the Semi final stage provided a shock too, with Roger Federer leaving the competition at the hands of Nikolay Davydenko, and Juan Martin Del Potro overcoming the challenge of French open finalist Robin Soderling.

This gave for an interesting final, with Davydenko, the world number 6, against Juan Martin Del Potro, the world number 5, and the match did not disappoint.

With some inspiring tennis from Davydenko, he won the first set 6-3, after totally outplaying Del Potro throughout. He carried this on to the second set, and after a late break, won it 6-4, taking the prestigious title, in just 80 minutes.

Del Potro, who came through a marathon match against Robin Soderling, eventually winning 6-7, 6-3, 7-6 the previous night, looked tired and definitely felt the fatigue from the night before. After the match, he said '(Davydenko) played unbelievable tennis, he beat me in a good way'.

This makes Davydenko the 'best of the best' in world tennis this year, and, on this performance, deservingly so. 

Button Signs For McLaren

Formula One world champion Jenson Button has signed on to drive for McLaren.

The 29 year old 'Frome Flyer' has signed a long term deal with the Woking based team, which see's him partner ex world champion and fellow Brit Lewis Hamilton. This is the first time two British world champions have started a season on the same team, since Graham Hill and Jim Clark drove together for Lotus in 1968.

Button said in a press release, '...life is all about challenges, and, most important of all, it’s about challenging yourself. So, although I won the World Championship with Brawn GP last year, and I’ll never forget that, I was always adamant that I wanted to continue to set myself fresh challenges.'

This new driver lineup is great news for British motorsport, but bad news for Finnish driver Kimi Raikkonen, who has decided to leave the sport to focus on a career in rallying, after failing to find a drive for the 2010 season.

Raikkonen, who won the world championship in 2007, set his sights on joining McLaren, as he saw them as having a competitive, championship winning car, which he was without during what is now his last season in F1, and after the drive was taken by Jenson Button, there were no teams he wanted to drive for. There were a number of teams interested in signing Raikkonen, but the combination of his high wage demands and his need to drive in a competitive car meant only McLaren were on his radar.

Already, the 2010 season looks to improve on the last in every possible way.

Uni Work - Radio

The last uni work I posted on here was for TV, and now we turn to Radio! Just for you, here is my group's work on Radio, focusing on Remembrance Day... Enjoy!

Rememberence Day (VOX) by mattmansfield

Penalty Joy For Canaries

Norwich pressed through to the Johnstone's Paint Southern Section Semi Final (ridiculous name for a tournament by the way) with a penalty shootout victory over Swindon.

Both teams squandered chances throughout the game, but Norwich keeper Fraser Forster (on loan from Newcastle United) saved Craig Easton's penalty for the home team in the shootout.

With this save, Forster managed to scrape back some respect from the Norwich fans after his dreadful mistake gifted Leeds a victory last month.

Other results in the tournament (North and South Sections):

Accrington Stanley 3 - 2 Bury

Bradford 2 - 2 Port Vale (Bradford win 5 - 4 on penalties)

Chesterfield 1 - 3 Carlisle

Leeds United 3 - 1 Grimsby

Leyton Orient 1 - 1 Hereford (Hereford win 3 - 2 on penalties)

MK Dons 3 - 1 Northampton

Tommorow sees the final match of the Quarter Final Stage of the tournament, Southampton vs Charlton

German Goalkeeper Dies

German international goalkeeper Robert Enke has died in a suspected suicide in Germany, after being hit by a train at a level crossing earlier today.

The Hannover 96 goalkeeper, 32, won 8 international caps for his country and was expected to be named as number 1 keeper in Germany's world cup squad, for next summer's tournament in South Africa.

A press conference is sceduled for tommorow (Wednesday) to shed more light on the tragedy.