Category Sports News

Archie Vaughan was born in 2005, when his father, Michael, famously led England to glory in the Ashes, but his legacy still lives on.

Although Vaughan, 19, who is set to start his second full season with Somerset, has a surname etched in cricket history, there are undoubtedly expectations that come with it.

The teenager is composed and modest, determined to improve on a breakout season that saw him bat 33.71 with the bat in the County Championship, take 15 wickets with his off-spin, including two five-wicket hauls, and be named England Under-19s captain in January against South Africa.

Vaughan told BBC Sport, “The pressure of expectation is just outside noise, and it certainly doesn’t come from my dad.”

He has had a significant impact, but what I admire most is how he takes a step back and simply lets me enjoy it, letting my coaches do it. I can’t thank him enough for allowing me to be my own man instead of letting me be myself.

Vaughan is aware of the significance and impact it had on the generations before him, despite the fact that he claims to have not seen any footage of the iconic 2005 series with his father.

The other characters in that series also bear the famous surname. Rocky Flintoff, the son of former all-rounder Andrew, has attracted a lot of praise for his bat-as-against-lancashire and England Lions performances.

At the under-19 level, there has already been a Vaughan-Flintoff reunion, and Vaughan believes it is beneficial to have some well-known cricketing fathers as partners.

He said, “We’ve been playing together since we were kids, and we’ve had a few conversations about it.”

Being only 16 and subject to so much noise and attention, it must be a big challenge for him. Someone else should be in the same boat, which is nice.

Vaughan’s success with the ball was unexpected because he had spent most of his youth playing the bat and scoring against Surrey, who had lost the county championship in September. His best performance came in September when he scored 11-140 against Surrey, who finished third overall.

The England Under-19s’ Youth Test against South Africa, which Vaughan won by 10 wickets, was his opening match of 2025.

Given that he only bowled seam before during the Covid-19 lockdown, he turned to bowling spin out of boredom.

Vaughan remarked, “It definitely caught me by surprise.”

“I’d still probably say I’m a batter, but I’ll continue to work hard, and it’s just about managing my expectations.”

I’ve been batting for as long as I can remember, whereas I haven’t been bowling for very long because I started it improperly in my back garden during lockdown.

Vaughan acknowledges that his family gave him the “great opportunity” to attend Millfield School and pursue his cricketing ambitions, but he is incredibly motivated to make the most of it.

Vaughan is confident in other areas, despite the fact that he is not drawn to comparisons to his father’s batting and captaincy.

He continued, “I’m pretty certain I’m a better off-spinner than him.” And I’m undoubtedly a better fielder.

Paul O’Connell has been named Ireland’s interim head coach for the summer tour of Georgia and Portugal after Simon Easterby was appointed to the British and Irish Lions coaching team.

Defence coach Easterby was given the Ireland interim head coach for the recent Six Nations because Andy Farrell is on a sabbatical from the role as he prepares to lead the Lions in Australia.

However, Farrell, as expected, has named Easterby in a Lions coaching team which will also have further Ireland representation in scrum coach John Fogarty and backs coach Andrew Goodman.

This led the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) to confirm later that forwards coach O’Connell, 45, will take charge of the Ireland squad in the Tests against Georgia and Portugal which take place on 5 July and 12 July.

IRFU performance director David Humphreys congratulated Easterby, Fogarty and Goodman on their inclusion in the Lions coaching team.

“It is a huge statement of faith in their skillsets and standing within the wider game, and I have no doubt that they will contribute greatly to a successful Lions tour,” said Humphreys.

“Simon’s appointment means that an opportunity arises for a new interim head coach for the two-match summer tour to Georgia and Portugal and I’m delighted that Paul O’Connell will assume the role for this tour.”

The remainder of the Ireland coaching team for the summer Tests will be announced next week.

The venues and kick-off times for the two games are yet to be confirmed.

Ireland’s tour squad is likely to be considerably understrength with a large contingent of regulars expected to be in contention for Lions selection.

Munster great O’Connell, who won 108 Ireland caps and played on three Lions tours including the 2009 series where he captained the side in South Africa, was appointed Ireland forwards coach in 2021 after Easterby switched to the defence coach role.

In any previous World Cup, there would be genuine fear about Brazil failing to qualify. Not this time.

In an expanded competition, with six South American teams making it through automatically, Brazil have a six-point cushion over a Venezuela team who have just registered their first victory in 10 games.

With four rounds to go, it is impossible to see Brazil not making the cut. But that is hardly the point.

For Brazil, World Cup qualification now serves one purpose – it provides a sequence of competitive matches during which they hope to build a side capable of winning the trophy. And with just over a year to go until 2026, that looks a long way off.

It is easy to forget how good Brazil were in the last World Cup, where they lost in the quarter-finals on penalties to a Croatia team whose only shot on goal in the match took a cruel deflection.

The Qatar 2022 Brazil side were solid – goalkeeper Alisson could have taken a deckchair out for most of the games – with flashes of brilliance. They could have won that competition.

So why have they fallen back so much? How can a team packed with so many good players form such a dismal unit?

Tuesday’s prolonged humiliation did not come out of the blue.

In game after game the team have looked disjointed, without clear strategies for progressing the ball down the field, and suffering from the possibility of being both outplayed and outnumbered in central midfield.

Individual talent has papered over the cracks – like on Thursday, when a stoppage-time Vinicius Jr special gave them a victory over Colombia their play had not really deserved.

But it can’t happen all the time.

And if the film is bad, especially if the cast is impressive, the director must be to blame.

There is a crisis in Brazilian coaching. It is hard to produce coaches when there is no time to train and no job security. That is the reality of domestic Brazilian football, and helps explain why almost all of the successful coaches in the country are now foreign – either Argentine or, especially, Portuguese.

The national boss – for now anyway – Dorival Jr is a product of the domestic game, with more than four decades’ experience as player and coach.

But on the international stage he comes across as a decent man thoroughly out of his depth.

Did he really think he could travel to Argentina and play two men in central midfield? Why not drop deep and create space for the counter-attack, as he did a year ago against England at Wembley? And when cool heads were required, his team came across as a bag of nerves, all too willing to get involved in cheap spats.

Of the three duties of the coach – pick the team, determine the strategy and set the emotional tone – Dorival failed dismally, and it is very hard to see how he can keep his job.

Whoever comes in – or Dorival if he manages to hang on – will have to deal with a simple observation – central midfield is not an optional extra.

It is an area where Brazil have had a problem for a while – a consequence of the 1990s trend of splitting the middle of the park into a pair of midfielders who only defend and a duo who mostly attack. It was at this point Brazilian play lost much of its former fluency, instead investing in rapid breaks down the flanks.

It is in this context that the problems of Lucas Paqueta are so significant.

The West Ham midfielder was on the verge of becoming a big-money Manchester City signing when scandal struck, and his career – now threatened – has not recovered.

The absence of Paqueta almost certainly led to Dorival building his hopes for these international dates around the return of Neymar – which, predictably, turned out to be ludicrously premature.

After so long out injured, it was only to be expected that Neymar would run into muscular problems, and he will need much more time on the field to ease his way back to a level where he can tip the balance.

At 33, he is an unknown quantity. But there is a gaping hole in the team for the type of deep-lying playmaker role he could fill.

Romantics might recall 2002, when Ronaldo looked all washed up only to make a triumphant return from injury and carry a Brazil side that almost failed to qualify all the way to World Cup title number five.

They are still waiting for number six.

Neil Gourley wants to be “at the top of the podium” as he tries to win the 1500m title at the Tokyo World Championships in the style of Josh Kerr and Jake Wightman.

Gourley, who had inspired his own captain’s speech to the British team at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Nanjing over the weekend, praised his fellow athletes and “leave room for the extraordinary” to inspire his first global medal over the distance.

After capturing the Norwegian star’s world 1500m gold, Gourley now wants to follow in his country’s footsteps in Japan by following in his compatriots’ footsteps.

And he continued, “It sounds like my turn, doesn’t it,” he said to BBC Scotland. That ambition is what I’m going by.

After being let down by missing the recent Glasgow World Indoor Championships, both of which were held just last year, Gourley is happy to embrace this level of ambition.

The Giffnock AC athlete’s goal of winning a middle-distance medal on the global stage has been helped by letting those mental wounds heal.

Twelve months ago, Gordon said, “I wasn’t in a great place mentally or physically. Because it would have been unique to hold the World Indoors in my hometown, I was quite upset when I saw it take place here in Glasgow.

“To compete in front of a large number of friends and family members.” On the day of the [in Nanjing]final, I had a lot of thought about that.

This one made you stronger mentally, and sometimes these things do.

Perhaps this mental fortitude helped Gourley, who had been given the honor of leading the British delegation, prepare for a rousing captain’s speech in front of his fellow athletes in Nanjing.

When asked what he told his team-mates, Gourley responded, “Leave some room for the extraordinary to happen.”

Don’t just go in the hope that you’ll do it all season or that you’ll be successful.

You must go out and make the case that there is something else, that you can take chances, and have some ambition.

Gourley’s ambition is undoubtedly paying off. His sights are both world gold and silver on the mantelpiece.

However, there is no way that his recent success will cause him to suffer.

Sweden’s Anthony Elanga said Northern Ireland are a “really good young team” and praised goalkeeper Pierce Charles, despite dominating Michael O’Neill’s young side in the Stockholm friendly.

Nottingham Forest striker Elanga was on the scoresheet in Sweden’s 5-1 win on Tuesday night, but thinks the beaten visitors are heading in the right direction under O’Neill.

“I’ve been watching Northern Ireland and I think they’re really good, they’ve got a really good manager.

“You’ve got a really good, young team that play football, play good football. I really enjoy watching you guys play.”

Elanga knows a number of O’Neill’s squad and believes 19-year-old goalkeeper Charles, who won his sixth cap at the Strawberry Arena, is an “amazing” prospect.

“I know a few of the players, Ethan Galbraith who I played with at [Manchester] United, the Charles brothers [who were products of the Manchester City youth system].

“He [Pierce] is an amazing goalkeeper by the way, he’s got a bright future.”

Sweden’s victory came without Tottenham winger Dejan Kulusevski and Sporting Lisbon striker Victor Gyokeres.

Elanga said he was “not at all” frustrated to start the game on the bench, especially with Nottingham Forest’s FA Cup quarter-final against Brighton on Saturday.

“Coming on, I wanted to make an impact and score and that’s what I did.