The Australian back-rower has signed a three-year contract with the Bulls after spending a year at The Willows.Francis Cummins, the Great Britain threequarter, has signed a new three- year contract with Leeds, but the Rhinos have lost their centre, Marvin Golden, who has joined Halifax Blue Sox on a one-year contract. Human beings are not on the agenda.”There have been no talks about joint player initiatives in previous meetings and nor would we countenance any in the future.”Woodward is thought to have cast his eyes back towards the likes of Connolly as he seeks to fill the void created by the retirement of Jeremy Guscott.Bradford, this year’s Super League runners-up, have signed Hudson Smith from Salford. Tunnicliffe was responding to reports that the England rugby union coach, Clive Woodward, wanted to revive a plan to recruit top league stars such as Wigan’s Gary Connolly, Kris Radlinski and Jason Robinson and that talks about a joint player initiative were on the table.
The Academy is being established in the north of England to service the needs of both codes and Tunnicliffe insisted that players will not be on the agenda.”We are seeking a capital grant worth around pounds 3m from Sport England to create a player development Academy in the north and one of the conditions is that it will be available to both codes,” he said.”We will be meeting the Rugby Football Union to discuss the matter of bricks and mortar. But the Rugby Football League chief executive, Neil Tunnicliffe, immediately ruled out the prospect of sharing players. LEADING OFFICIALS from rugby league and rugby union will get together at Twickenham today to discuss proposals for a joint Academy.

is provide a pathway to restoring performance in sport,” Vanstone said.n The Austrian weightlifter Werner Hoeller has tested positive for the banned stimulant phentermine and will miss next week’s World Championship in Athens, an Austrian news agency reported yesterday.The 22-year-old Hoeller, who could face a two-year ban if his B sample is also positive, admitted to taking appetite suppressants containing the drug in order to reduce his weight from 73kg to 69kg.. “This I think is a most significant development in the fight against drugs in sport,” Gosper said.The ministers also called for drug testing laboratories to be accredited by an independent agency and for governments to fund testing programmes.They said WADA should establish and maintain a list of prohibited substances and that athletes should gain prior approval to use substances for genuine therapeutic reasons.They also called on governments to restrict imports of anabolic steroids and peptide hormones and agreed to establish a consultative committee to work with WADA.”We can not change recent history involving drugs in sport What we can do… But they added: “For WADA to operate effectively it needs to involve athletes, all sports and governments from all regions.”The IOC vice-president, Kevan Gosper, who attended the summit, welcomed the communique and said athletes would be represented on WADA. “We want a fair go for athletes who don’t take drugs.”The IOC failed in February to get sporting federations to agree on a compulsory two-year ban for serious drug offences across Olympic sports. The Sydney summit, attended by representatives from nations such as Australia, South Africa and the United States, has no power to force sporting bodies to adopt the ban.”Governments do not want to run sport,” Vanstone said, “but it is clear that we can help in delivering better outcomes through education, reduction in the supply of illicit drugs and scientific testing research.”The sports ministers agreed to support the IOC’s new World Anti-Doping Agency, which was formed last week with the backing of the European Union but without the support of the United States, who feel WADA is not independent enough to tackle the problem.”WADA can provide international leadership and co-ordination for a range of anti-doping activities,” the sports ministers said in a joint statement. The ministers, meeting at the Drugs In Sport summit in Sydney, backed the International Olympic Committee’s new anti-doping organisation, but agreed it must be transparent, accountable and have wider representation, especially from athletes.
“This summit recognises that we want gold medals to be won on the track, not in the test tube,” the Australian justice minister and chair of the summit, Amanda Vanstone, said. SPORTS MINISTERS from 24 nations yesterday issued a unified call for two-year bans across all sports for first-time doping offences and for year-round random drug testing.

“The IAAF rules if it is not in your body it doesn’t matter where it came from,” Gyulai said.IAAF officials said a decision whether or not to refer the Christie case to the federation’s arbitration panel was unlikely to be taken until tomorrow, two days before the annual gala dinner.. UK Athletics ruled that it could not be proven by reasonable doubt that the steroid was derived from a prohibited substance. He was re-elected by the congress for a further four-year term at the World Championships in Seville this year.One of his main presidential contenders, Helmut Digel, a German professor, appeared to rule himself out of contention last week by taking a new post which will give him less time to devote to federation business.The IAAF’s general secretary, Istvan Gyulai, remains a possible candidate, as does China’s Lou Depeng, who would give his country a forum to argue Beijing’s case to host the Olympic Games.An immediate task facing Diack will be the drugs issue which bedevilled Nebiolo over two decades.The federations’s Doping Commission met last weekend to consider the most recent cases, including Britain’s 1992 Barcelona Olympic 100 metres champion, Linford Christie.Christie was cleared by the British governing body after testing positive for the anabolic steroid nandrolone last February, a decision which irritated the IAAF. The situation is likely to dominate discussions at the IAAF council’s two-day meeting at their Monaco headquarters today and tomorrow.IAAF officials said the council would consider how long Diack’s interim presidency would continue and whether the position would need an immediate vote by the federation’s congress, comprising representatives of the individual federations.They said a postal vote was possible or else the council could convene a congress at one of the two major events next year, the World Cross-country Championships, in Portugal in March, or the Olympic Games, in Sydney six months later.Nebiolo, the president of the IAAF since 1981, was the third most important person in world sport after the International Olympic Committee president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, and Sepp Blatter, the president of football’s world governing body, Fifa.

THE SENEGALESE lawyer Lamine Diack will today present his case for retaining control of the International Amateur Athletic Federation, the sport’s world governing body, following the death of the IAAF’s former president, Primo Nebiolo, earlier this month. Nebiolo, 76, who supervised the transition from amateurism to professionalism in the primary sport of the Olympic Games, died in Rome on 7 November.
As the senior IAAF vice-president, the 66-year-old Diack automatically assumed the presidency, following Nebiolo’s death, but said this week that he would like to continue in the role. “What I’ve got to do now is forget about this match and concentrate on the next one.”John Parrott narrowly avoided defeat against the veteran Joe Johnson. The 1991 World and UK champion came from 7-6 down to defeat his 47-year- old rival 9-7.Dominic Dale’s 145 clearance – the highest break in the UK Championship since 1995 – counted for little as he lost 9-4 to the Scotsman Drew Henry.. But now I’ve got my fluency back,” added the 29-year-old 1998 Asian Games gold medallist. But you can’t play that type of game any more because everyone goes for their shots these days,” he said.”I was still playing an 80s game in the 1990s I had to try so hard last season just to make a 50 break.

“I was always told `just play safe and wait for your chance’. My safety play was appaling and I couldn’t score when I had the opportunity.”For Shokat it was further proof that he has been right to adopt a more aggressive style of play. Ebdon, the world No 13, said: “I thought my preparation was spot on for this tournament and it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what went wrong. “I probably would have done better if I’d tried to miss the balls deliberately. Shokat didn’t have to play well to beat me and that makes it worse.”
Ebdon added only one further frame to his overnight 5-3 deficit as Shokat moved forward to meet the Welsh left-hander Darren Morgan.Shokat finished the match off with a break of 71 to go with earlier runs of 98, 85, and 99. “I don’t think I could have played any worse had I tried,” said Ebdon. The 1995 UK finalist was fuming following a surprise 9-4 third-round defeat by the world No 69 Shokat Ali of Pakistan.