“He’s shown his calibre this season and he’d be a breath of fresh air in the RNL.”McGuire admits that could be a long-term aim, but his more immediate one is to get into the side to play Australia at the City of Manchester Stadium.The Rhinos’ half-back has admitted that he would not have been ready had he been picked in the Ashes series last year.”It could have been a bit early, but I feel now that the extra year has benefited me a lot,” McGuire said.The Great Britain assistant coach, Jon Sharp, revealed that McGuire has only improved his chances this week.”We’ve been highly delighted with Danny’s input into things,” he said “We’ve still some final decisions to make. Adrian Morley, the one Briton playing at top level in Australia, believes that Leeds’ try-scoring phenomenon, Danny McGuire, could make it there as well, but McGuire still does not know whether he will face the Kangaroos on Saturday.
“I think he’d go very well,” said Morley yesterday. Padraig Harrington, who won the German Masters after having laser surgery on one of his eyes, tees up having just had the other one done.. Luke Donald is making his competitive debut here, although he gained experience of the course while attending training sessions with the England amateur team in the mid-Nineties.

His nephew, Ivan Ballesteros, of the family’s Amen Corner company, said: “I’m pretty sure he has nothing to say about this. It’s something that happened and I don’t think people should make a big deal of it.”The matter should not overshadow the season’s finale here, the Volvo Masters, which despite missing the defending champion, Fredrik Jacobson, and Ernie Els, who is already assured of winning the order of merit, features all 12 of the victorious European Ryder Cup team.Colin Montgomerie is the only one of the 54 players to have won on the course. Under the European Tour’s code of conduct, players are expected to uphold “honesty, fair dealings, courtesy and sportsmanship at all times, whether on or off the golf course”.Ballesteros was on business in Santander yesterday. Following the first of them, in Madeira in March, Ballesteros and Zamora ended up having a furious row in the car park.Following the second in Italy in May, when Ballesteros spoke of the “PGA mafia”, the former Open and Masters champion was fined and severely reprimanded by the tournament committee.Zamora has reported the incident at Pedrena to his superior, David Garland, the director of tour operations, but has decided not to talk about it publicly. Sadly, the alleged perpetrator is all too well known to the authorities.
Seve Ballesteros, who has had a miserable time being unable to play this season due to his back problems, was attending a Spanish amateur tournament at his home club of Pedrena when he was involved in an altercation with one of the players, Jose Maria Zamora.Zamora’s day job is as a tournament director for the European Tour and he was involved in one of two instances last year when Ballesteros was penalised for slow play. Officials from the European Tour found themselves in the extraordinary position yesterday of investigating an incident at an event that was not for professionals and by a player who has not played a tournament all year. Substitutes not used: Morrison, Considine, O’Leary.Referee: W Young..

Substitutes not used: Hedman (gk), Pearson, Lambert, Beattie.Aberdeen (3-5-2): Preece (Esson, 13), McGuire, Severin, Anderson; Hart, Adams, Tosh, Clark, McNaughton (Stewart, 78); Mackie, Pasquinelli (Foster, 56). Hartson and Juninho then squandered great chances, blazing their shots over the bar. John Stewart snatched a remarkable victory for Aberdeen at Parkhead last night with the final kick of the ball to inflict the first Scottish Premier League defeat of the season upon the champions. “How typical of Manchester City, that we should rattle one into the top corner when it would do us no good. It was a nothing goal,” he said, his voice overflowing with anger and raw hurt. By the time Ars? Wenger reaches the final year of his new contract, the Arsenal manager would hope to be denied the dubious pleasures of the Carling Cup.

However, if the competition serves a purpose at Highbury, it was admirably fulfilled with two goals that would not have appeared out of place in the senior side. Robin van Persie, a fierce if erratic talent bred on Rotterdam street football, finished off a sweetly timed pass from Mathieu Flamini, while Daniel Karbassiyoon’s shot sparked a mass walk-out from a City of Manchester Stadium that boasted 26,000 empty seats.Wenger described Van Persie’s strike as “a typical Arsenal goal” and in English football this is a phrase that carries very high praise. Their performance markedly stepped up a gear with the introduction of Quincy Owusu-Abeiye, a product of Ajax’s fabled academy and part of what Wenger described as a five-year programme of headhunting young talent from across Europe.However, you could tell the slenderness in Arsenal’s resources, compared to their rivals, just by glancing at the team Wenger put out last night. It cost a fraction of the £90m worth of players Jose Mourinho flung into his Carling Cup tie at Stamford Bridge and the £35m side Manchester United had fielded against Crewe on Tuesday. This really was a side of raw kids (and Pascal Cygan), who in the event found themselves barely stretched.

Arsenal increased in poise and balance as the tie wore on; as in Keegan’s words they realised that Manchester City, who had seven first-team regulars, carried no threat.”I wanted to show there was not that great a gap between Manchester City and what was almost an Arsenal third team,” Keegan said. “Yes, I am embarrassed and why shouldn’t I be?” His young players, he claimed, fulfilled his expectations, the senior men universally did not This was a match he badly wanted to win. It is 28 years since Manchester City won a trophy and the Carling Cup was their most obvious route to silverware. The sight of Fowler sprinting on to a neat cushioned header from Antoine Sibierski and then screwing wide from a dozen yards early on would have been achingly frustrating.