NFL SHOWTIME
The eyes of the world remain on the USA on Sunday with the championship games of the NFL and places in the Super Bowl at stake. The Green Bay Packers travel to Georgia to face the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC match (Sky Sports 1, 8.05pm GMT), before the New England Patriots take home field advantage into their game against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC (Sky Sports 1, 11.40pm GMT). Oh, and the chance to meet Lady Gaga after her half-time show in next month’s final.
WEMBLEY PRIZE
Wembley is on the horizon for the first time this season as the second legs of the EFL Cup semi-finals take place. Liverpool must overturn a 1-0 deficit from the first leg when they host Southampton, while Manchester United take a 2-0 advantage to Hull’s KCom Stadium, which is, unusually, taking place on a Thursday. Why? Both Hull and Southampton had this weekend’s Premier League matches rescheduled to Sunday for TV, which would have left little over 48 hours of recuperation if their semi-final went ahead on Tuesday.
FRAMPTON’S GRAND DATE
Carl Frampton is already throwing punches. In the buildup to his hotly anticipated WBA world featherweight title rematch with Leo Santa Cruz, the Northern Irishman says he has been knocking out his sparring partners. Frampton took the title from the Mexican fighter in New York last year, inflicting his first defeat in 33 fights. It’s a late one, though, on Sunday week, with undercard coverage starting at 1am from Las Vegas’s MGM Grand (Sky Sports 1).
SUTTON’S CUP HOPE
The next dose of FA Cup football is coming. In the fourth round, the Premier League champions Leicester travel to Derby on Friday (BBC1, 7.55pm) as they look to kickstart their stuttering season with success in the Cup, before Saturday sees Liverpool play Wolves and Manchester City against Crystal Palace. Sutton’s match with Leeds, Millwall against Watford and, of course, Manchester United v Wigan have been shifted to Sunday for TV.
ROSES IN BLOOM
South Africa v England marks the start of Netball’s 2017 Quad Series. New Zealand and Australia are also in action to make up the four-team round robin tournament, the first half of which is taking place in Durban before moving to the UK for the latter stages. England Roses face the hosts Spar Proteas in the second game of the tournament and are looking to repeat the success of their last outing against South Africa, in which the newly appointed vice-captain Jade Clarke become England’s most capped netballer of all time in a 57-44 win.
LOOK OUT FOR …
More magic of the FA Cup? Scottish FA Cup, yes. Today’s big TV game isn’t Arsenal or Chelsea – it’s part-time Albion Rovers v Brendan Rodgers’ Celtic: a fourth-round romance, live on Sky at 3pm.
Albion Rovers? That’s two teams, right? They used to be: the club was formed in 1882 from a merger of two sides in the North Lanarkshire town of Coatbridge. You’ll never guess what those two sides were called.
Albion FC and Rovers FC? Too good. As a united force they’ve been knocking around the lower levels of the league system since 1919, and are mid-table in League One this season. Financially, though, they’re struggling – so this cup run couldn’t have come at a better time. After beating Queen of the South at home in the last round, they’ll host Celtic today at a neutral venue, Airdrie’s Excelsior Stadium.
Why not at their own ground? Cliftonhill holds 1,238 - The Excelsior 10,101. Rovers rapidly sold out their 1,500 ticket allocation, and Celtic fans bought the rest, with 8,000 tickets going in one day.
That’s got to help the bank balance … “When we beat Queen of the South at home we banked £843,” said the chairman, Ronnie Boyd, last week. “The Celtic game will be substantially more than that: it’ll move us from a battle for survival to stability for the next year or so. It’s that big. It’s all seemed very unreal for a while, but now we’ve had meetings with the press and the police it’s very real. We’re looking forward to it immensely.”
Can’t be easy to organise for a club run by volunteers? There have been issues. “Getting the tickets printed was difficult,” says Boyd. “The printers closed down for Christmas so I had to drive to Dumbarton to get them and take them to Celtic Park. They were very nice at Celtic, they asked what I did at Albion Rovers - I said I was the chairman. They didn’t believe me at first.”
So what are Rovers’ chances? As slim as they get. Albion are 28-1 to win the game. But never say never. “I’ve been involved in a couple of shocks,” says midfielder Mark Ferry. “We know we’ve already won just by drawing Celtic – that was such a big thing for the club. But we’ve won our last two games. We’re in half decent form.” Player-manager Darren Young: “The atmosphere will be electric. These games don’t come along very often so when they do you’ve got to make the most of it. There’s no other team in Scottish football that’s beaten Celtic this season. That’s the task we’ve got.”
