Dai Sport

Jason Pritchard has won the Protyre Motorsport UK Asphalt Rally Championship title for a third time in a row after scoring maximum points on the final round, the Ford Parts Cheviot Stages Rally.

Of all the strange revelations given to Cardiff City supporters groups last weekend in a meeting with chairman Mehmet Dalman, surely the least surprising was that owner Vincent Tan has a preference for “a direct style of football.” Of course, he does. This is a man, lest we forget, who told the players when he met them back in 2016 to “shoot more”. Providing secretly mined data previously unknown to club coaches and analysts throughout European football, the Malaysian billionaire said: “If you shoot 30 times you'll get three goals, 40 times will be four goals, 50 times and you'll get five goals.

Dai Young branded the decision to send off Ray Lee-Lo a “harsh” call but still heaped praise on his Cardiff team after they held off the derby challenge of the Dragons. The club’s director of rugby saw Le-Lo shown a red card for a high tackle on Sam Davies before Cardiff clung on for a 31-29 victory. It moved them up to seventh spot in the United Rugby Championship, with the Ospreys ahead of them in fifth and both the Scarlets and Dragons in the bottom half of the table.

Finally finding a way to beat the All Blacks after 68 years of heartache is all in the mind according to Wales’ most capped scrum half, Mike Phillips. Wayne Pivac’s Welsh side take on New Zealand in the opening game of their Autumn International Series on Saturday with the head coach already having hit the warning light by telling fans to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. You have to go back to 1953 for the last time Wales managed to beat one of their biggest rivals. Since then it has been one-way traffic with the Kiwis winning 31 in a row.

Chris Wilder has been installed as the bookies’ favourite to become the next manager of Cardiff City following the sacking of Mick McCarthy. The 54-year-old Wilder has not taken up a new managerial role since leaving Sheffield United in March, when the club were bottom of the Premier League. Middlesbrough's 2-0 win over Cardiff on Saturday spelt the end for McCarthy, who had suffered a club record eight straight defeats.

Under fire Cardiff City boss Mick McCarthy admitted he rang up Steve Bruce before his 1,000th game as a manger because he wanted “to speak to someone who is feeling worse than me”. For Bruce it was 1,000 and out after the 3-2 home defeat for Newcastle United against Spurs and McCarthy could well follow him onto the dole queue if his side suffers an eighth successive defeat to Middlesbrough on Saturday. “I spoke to Steve the week before and I actually rang him because I thought I’d find someone who is feeling worse than me. He was top of my list,” said McCarthy.

The top end of the Swansea Valley has been a hotbed breeding ground for sporting talent for years. Bleddyn Bowen, Robert Jones, Greg Thomas, Justin Tipuric and Ben Davies are just some of the stars the local schools have honed in various sports. The current crop isn’t bad, either – Wales and Cardiff City footballer Rubin Colwill and Ospreys centre Joe Hawkins, who plays against Munster on Saturday night, and who spoke to Graham Thomas. Joe Hawkins is keen to follow his old football rival Rubin Colwill onto the full international stage, but is happy to bide his time. Ospreys centre Hawkins and fellow 19-year-old Colwill – already a senior Wales football international after a breakthrough year at Cardiff City - used to play football against each other as 15-year-olds, until Hawkins gave his sole attention to rugby.

Brinn Bevan said he had “mixed emotions” after marking his return to gymnastics’ world stage. Wales’ 2016 Olympian was back competing for Great Britain at the 2021 Artistic World Championships in Kitakyushu, Japan alongside fellow Wales Commonwealth Games contender Joe Cemlyn-Jones – who was making his debut at a major championship. It was the first time since 1987 that Wales had two senior men’s artistic gymnasts in the Great Britain team in the same year for an Artistic World Championships.