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West
Bromwich Albion’s Nigerian forward, Osaze Odemwingie, is aiming to
score a minimum of 15 goals this season and in the process beat his own
personal best mark of 14 goals. That 14-goal mark was achieved by the
Nigerian back in the 2005/06 season during his time at French outfit
Lille.

This season, since
joining Albion from Russia’s Lokomotiv Moscow in August, Odemwingie has
hit 11 Premier League goals, including two in his last three games to
boost the Baggies’ Premier League survival hopes.

Odemwingie,
following last Saturday’s strike against Sunderland in the Baggies’ 3-2
win at the Stadium of Light, also equalled the club’s record goals mark
set by Robert Earnshaw six years ago.

Hotter than Rooney and Drogba

The 29-year-old is
currently joint-sixth in the Premier League’s scoring chart, ahead of
the likes of Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney and Chelsea’s Didier
Drogba, and now wants to go ahead and beat his own personal best of 14
goals in a campaign over the course of the final six games.

“Of course it will
be written if I get more than 11 and I will be happy with that,”
Odemwingie told his club’s official website. “But my target is still
there to beat my own record, which was 14 goals in a season, and
hopefully I can get there.

“It is just a plus
for me that I am holding the record for the number of goals in the
Premier League for West Brom. I’m sure one day someone will beat it –
but hopefully I will get more than 11.

“There are still six games to go and it is possible to get 15 – especially if they give me every penalty.”

Penalty plea

Odemwingie missed
from the penalty spot during New Year’s Day 2-1 defeat to Manchester
United, and ever since, Chris Brunt has been charged with the task of
taking the Baggies’ spot kicks and has so far done a good job. “Brunty
looks confident and we trust him now with the kicks,” continued
Odemwingie, referring to Brunt. “But if we’re winning 2-0 or 3-0 maybe
I can ask him for the penalty so I can get more goals.

“But for now we’re
sticking to the game plan and the target is still to achieve the
objectives of the team and then my own rewards will come if I work hard
for them.”

Saturday’s victory
over Sunderland was the third in four games for the side promoted at
the end of last season to the Premier League and made it 12 points from
six games under manager Roy Hodgson, who was previously in charge of
Liverpool. But there remains a lot of work to be done if the Baggies
plan to avoid an immediate return to the lower tiers of English
football. “We have 39 points and I think we need two more wins to be
there in terms of safety,” said Odemwingie. “We have tough games now
against Chelsea and Tottenham, Newcastle away will be difficult, as
will Everton at home.

“After the game, the head coach mentioned to us that it was a great
result but we’re still not safe and we will still have to fight to stay
up,” he added.

After
putting up a splendid performance against Equatorial Guinea in the
London 2012 Olympics qualifier over the weekend, the National U-23 team
will today begin camping for their next assignment: a date with their
Liberian counterpart in the race to make it to the All-Africa Games
billed for Maputo, Mozambique, later this year.

Stanley Eguma,
assistant coach of the team, said the players are aware of the tight
schedule on ground and would be expected to hit Benin City today to
begin preparations for the trip to Monrovia to face the Liberian U-23
side. “There is no rest for now, we just have to get down to business,”
he said.

“You know there are
no more minnows in football so we cannot say we will take time before
starring our preparation” Nigeria is hoping to make a return to the
All-Africa Games football event after missing out on the last edition
in Algiers, Algeria. Only eight slots are up for grabs at the Maputo
Games.

Good tactics

Meanwhile, players
of the National U-23 Dream Team “V” have showered praises on head coach
Austin Eguavoen’s tactics last match in Malabo.

After the 9-1
aggregate victory recorded, Team Captain Kingsley Udoh attributed the
team’s win to team work and determination. “It was a good game for us.
We played to the coach’s formation and this helped us a lot. But all in
all, our determination to succeed worked a lot for the team,” the
Heartland defender declared.

Said Spain-based
defender, Ibot Edet: ”We knew that the task was not going to be an easy
one but we went into the game with victory on our mind.

“Playing to the coach’s instructions coupled with the team spirit in
camp, we were determined to take the points at stake and that was what
we did.” For Amodu Usman, who saw 90 minutes of action and held the
left full back, Coach Austin Eguavoen’s tactics were instrumental to
their success. “I am happy to be back in the national team and I must
confess the coach’s tactics helped us.”

It was like old
times for Tiger Woods at the Masters on Sunday as the former world
number one put himself in position to claim a fifth green jacket and
had huge galleries cheering him on.

When he started the
back nine on the final day, when the suffocating pressure of the
Masters separates the men from the boys, there he was, perched in his
customary position at the top of the leaderboard and on the prowl.

He was five under
par for the day and had just eagled the eighth hole to join the
leaders. With momentum and experience on his side, the green jacket was
beckoning and the galleries at Augusta National roared with excitement.

But the Woods of
2011 is not the same man who dominated golf since 1997 while racking up
14 major titles. As hard as he tried, he could not conjure up any more
of his old magic.

He could only manage par at the par-five 13th hole, which he had birdied in each of the previous three rounds.

At the 15th,
another par-five, he reached the green in two and had a chance for a
second eagle from six feet that would have given him the outright lead.
But he missed and settled for a birdie, his last for the tournament.

He played the back
nine in even par for a final round 67 for a 10-under-par total of 278.
By most standards, it was a great performance but it was only enough to
leave him tied for fourth, four back of South African winner Charl
Schwartzel.

“I got off to a
good start on the front nine and on the back nine didn’t putt well and
hit one loose iron there at 13,” Woods told reporters. “I should have
shot an easy three or four under on the back nine and I only posted
even.” Ultimately, it was his putter that let him down. He needed 33
putts on Saturday, 31 on Sunday and missed a handful of short putts
that might have been tap-ins in years gone by.

The drought

Woods has not won a
major since 2008 nor any tournament since 2009 when the sordid details
of his private life became public and his game began to implode.

The golf world has been waiting patiently for him to resurface and continue his chase of Jack Nicklaus’s record 18 majors.

As riveting as his
latest charge was, the jury is still out on whether he can win the five
majors he needs to pass Nicklaus but there have been some positive
signs.

The 35-year-old has
been working hard at rebuilding his swing and his performance at
Augusta over the past four days showed that he is anything but a spent
force.

“I hit it good all day. This entire weekend I hit it good,” he said,
with a hint of understatement and frustration. “So that was a nice
feeling.”

What United must not do

With an away goal
plus the 90,000 strong-crowd at Old Trafford, Manchester United have it
all – but they must not press down the accelerator when Chelsea get
unto the pitch today. A 0-0 result qualifies the Red Devils for the
semi-finals and probably a tie against German side Schalke 04. United
made eight changes to their team for the visit of Fulham on Saturday
and won comfortably 2-0. So the players that are going to be in action
today are rested and ready – which might actually be a good thing
considering that the players will be able to make lung-busting runs
behind the defence of Chelsea and also recover in time to defend. So
the key to victory lies in being patient and making sure that the
players deliver the right pass and keep the ball the majority of the
time. Chelsea will want to set a high tempo and a lot of balls will be
delivered aerially to Didier Drogba with Nicolas Anelka and Florent
Malouda hoping for knockdowns.

United must always
ensure that they have a free man handy in front of Nemanja Vidic and
Rio Ferdinand – even though Ferdinand played the first leg very well,
reading the body language of the strikers very well.

Alex Ferguson –
“Wayne will be fresher, that’s for sure. Missing the game on Saturday
has given him six days of good preparation for tomorrow. At this time
of the year, fatigue comes into it and it’s one of the reasons I made
changes on Saturday. We felt it was important – not only to give
freshness but to give some players game time.”

What Chelsea must do

The cliché – ‘No
retreat, no surrender’‑ aptly describes the situation that the Blues
find themselves and from the referee’s signal to start the game,
Chelsea have to be on the front foot – seeking to score and that brings
in itself a lot of questions for the manager, Carlo Ancelotti. Should
he revert to the tried and trusted 4-3-3 over the 4-4-2, which was
employed last week at Stamford Bridge? It showed in the latter phase of
the first leg that immediately they switched formations with Mikel Obi
coming on for Jose Bosingwa, they were able to overwhelm United in
Midfield. Frank Lampard now had the latitude to bomb forward on his
customary late runs. If Ancelotti wants anything out of this match,
then he has to flood the midfield to put more pressure on Michael
Carrick and Ryan Giggs, though United should line up in a 4-5-1
formation and rely on the counterattack. Another question that must be
answered before kick-off is whether to pair Didier Drogba and Fernando
Torres again? The answer should be Drogba over Torres, who is still
finding his feet with the midfielders, unsure where to deliver the ball
to the Spaniard. They already know the strengths and movements of
Drogba. Chelsea need to find the first goal in this match or it is
curtains – if that is not already the case!

Youssi Benayoun –
“The thing left is to try to win a trophy and the only one we can win
is the Champions League. If we win this game it will change everything.
I’m sure if we beat United we’ll go to the end and win the trophy. They
are a big team with a great manager but we have belief we can do it,
despite losing at home. We have to give everything and try our best.”

Fact: Torres, who
is yet to score for Chelsea, has gone 13 games and 817 minutes without
a goal for club and country, his longest drought since a 17-match
streak while at Club Atlético de Madrid in 2005.

Barcelona looking forward

No one (except the
punters) believes that there will be a Dombass miracle today. Dombass
Arena is the 5-star stadium where Shakhtar Donetsk will welcome FC
Barcelona tonight hoping to turn around a 1-5 deficit. Though they say
anything is possible in football, it will be a catastrophic decline if
it were achieved by the Ukrainian club – moreover Barcelona still has
the effervescent Lionel Messi in their ranks. So will Pep Guardiola use
the main team or rest some key players ahead of the Classico this
weekend at the Santiago Bernebeu, but that will be disrespecting Mircea
Lucescu and his team. Though the mountain just got steeper with an
injury to one of his key defenders and captain, Dario Srna, who has
been ruled out for two weeks. Srna now joins Olexandr Kucher and Dmytro
Chygrynskiy on the injury list while left-back, Razvan Rat, is
suspended. Shakhtar also suffered their first defeat at the new Dondass
Arena, losing 1-0 to FC Obolon.

The Catalans are also shorn of Carles Puyol, Eric Abidal and Bojan Krkic while Andres Iniesta is suspended.

The
San Antonio Spurs took another step toward securing home-court
advantage throughout the NBA postseason with a 111-102 win over the
Utah Jazz.

Having wrapped up
the top seeding in the Western Conference, the Spurs are 1.5 games
ahead of Eastern Conference leaders Chicago, with the Bulls having
three games left to play.

San Antonio seized
control of a close first half with a 15-2 run that straddled halftime,
and held off a surge by the Jazz early in the fourth that saw the
Spurs’ lead narrowed to 91-85.

Richard Jefferson
scored 20 points and Tony Parker had 13 as all five Spurs starters
scored double digits despite seeing limited action after opening up a
large lead.

“All year long, and
pretty much most of my career, whenever I score big numbers it’s
because my teammates got me the ball,” said Jefferson, who connected on
4 of 7 from three point range. “A lob from Gary Neal, some passes from
Tony Parker early really got me going. Last year I struggled a little
bit, especially from the 3-point line.

“This summer when I
worked with the coaches I really focused in on that because that was my
role. It’s really helped me this season.”

The Spurs bench
added 44 points, led by Tiago Splitter’s 13 and Gary Neal added 12
points, as San Antonio cruised to their fourth win in a row.

“I feel that is what makes their team so special,” Jazz forward Paul
Millsap said. “They have guys that can come off the bench and score the
basketball. They truly play basketball out there.” Al Jefferson led the
Jazz with 23 points.

Arsenal
overcame a brief Blackpool fight back to win 3-1 at Bloomfield Road and
close the gap on Manchester United to seven points at the top of the
Premier League on Sunday.

Arsenal, who
fielded 41-year-old Jens Lehmann in goal for the first time in three
years as an emergency stand-in for Manuel Almunia, were 2-0 up after 21
minutes thanks to goals from Abou Diaby and Emmanuel Eboue.

Blackpool replied
after 52 minutes when Gary Taylor-Fletcher scored after the referee
waved play on despite Lehmann bringing down DJ Campbell in the penalty
area. Although they had other chances, the seaside strugglers failed to
find the equaliser.

Instead, Arsenal
wrapped up the victory with a superb goal on the counter-attack after
76 minutes when Cesc Fabregas and Theo Walcott combined on the break
before Walcott crossed for Robin van Persie to score in front of goal.

Lehmann, who left
Arsenal three years ago and returned after coming out of retirement
last month to help solve a goalkeeper crisis, was called into the game
just before kickoff after Almunia was injured in the warm-up.

The result lifted Arsenal to 62 points, seven behind leaders United
with a game in hand. Blackpool remained a point and a place above the
relegation zone.

The West African Football Union, (WAFU) now has a new president.
He is Ghana Football Association boss, Kwesi Nyantakyi who will occupy the
position previously occupied by Nigeria’s Amos Adamu.

Adamu, currently serving a three-year ban from football related
activities imposed on him by FIFA, after he was caught on video expressing his
readiness to accept a bribe from undercover reporters of England-based
newspaper, the Sunday Times, who pretended to represent a company seeking to
buy votes for the USA’s World Cup bid.

The Nigerian was then a vice-president of the world governing
body and became the first FIFA member ever to be banned for seeking bribes.

As a result he was not permitted to take part in the voting for
the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, won by Russia and Qatar respectively.

Adamu was also a member of the executive committee of Africa’s
football body, CAF as well as the president of WAFU but his positions in both
bodies were also affected by his global ban.

However, WAFU met over the weekend in Banjul, Gambia and
appointed an interim executive committee headed by the Ghanaian. The meeting
was called for the purpose of electing new executives to replace the Adamu-led
administration.

Bin Hammam in attendance

During the meeting, which had in attendance Qatar’s Mohammed Bin
Hammam who is hoping to get WAFU’s vote ahead of the FIFA presidential polls,
WAFU members also considered moving the regional body’s headquarters from Cote
d’Ivoire owing to the political turmoil in the country.

But the scheduled election had to be postponed after CAF
intervened, stating that it would meet next month to review the regional
football bodies in Africa.

“The general assembly accepted a recommendation from CAF to
postpone elections to the Executive Committee of WAFU until the former carries
out a proposed review of the organisation of all zonal unions in Africa,” a
WAFU communiqué read.

The communiqué also stated that WAFU will meet in Zurich,
Switzerland on May 31 to decide on the date to hold elections. But the interim
executive committee led by Nyantakyi will steer the affairs of the sub-regional
body until their meeting in Zurich.

There are seven members in the new interim executive committee. They are
Ivorian, Idris Diallo; Burkinabe Theodore Sawadogo and Mali’s Hamadou Cisse.
Senegal’s Augustin Senghore, Jose Lobato of Guinea Bissau and Gambian Seedy
Kinteh are also members of the interim executive committee.

It
is indeed refreshing to see peace returning to the rugby family in
Nigeria. Two years of conflict between two key members of the family
-Friends of Rugby and Racing Club came to an end on Thursday.

The disquiet in the
fraternity had commenced in 2009 after the National Sports Commission
(NSC), which felt that some sports in the country would fare better if
they were allowed to be run by private individuals, had gone ahead to
concession them; one of the affected being rugby.

Friends of Rugby, a
body comprising individuals interested in promoting the game and which
lost out in the bid, accused the then Secretary General of the
federation of masterminding its defeat. At any rate, Racing Rugby Club
went ahead to form the leadership of the new board.

Also interested in
moving the game forward, members of the new board of the NRFF,
comprised largely of young and intelligent men, threw their energies
into the effort. But it clearly wasn’t going to work out because as a
rule the international Rugby Board (IRB), which supervises rugby
globally, does not recognise concessioning but elections as a means of
changing the leadership of a national federation. It promptly clamped a
ban on Nigeria from participating in all competitions organised by it
in addition to withholding grants to the country.

That was the state
of affairs until the National Olympic Committee (NOC), through Tunde
Popoola, its Secretary General, waded in January. The warring parties
agreed in principle to come together to form a new board through the
holding of elections, which would begin at the zones. That process has
run its course leading to the meeting last Thursday, where results of
the elections from the different zones were collated and a formula for
sharing of positions in the federation agreed upon.

This is clearly
sweet music to the ears of those of us who have craved a settlement of
the crisis. The cost of conflict has been high. Our inability to take
part in high profile rugby competitions because of the subsisting ban,
robbed us of the opportunity raise our profile in the game. The fact
that the ban happened at a time the awareness of the sports was
growing, with more and more young men embracing the sport either as
players or spectators, made it even more unfortunate.

Getting back on track

Thankfully, we have
put that behind us. Now is the time to make up for lost time. We must
commend officials of the old board, led by Kayode Oguntayo, for the
maturity they showed in agreeing to hold elections. It shows them to be
really committed to the growth and development of the game. The impact
they had on the sport in the brief period they held the fort has been
visible to all, particularly their push to capture children in
secondary schools through the Cowbell iTRY programme. If sustained, the
programme has the potential of bringing about growth in rugby even
beyond the grassroots, which they are focusing heavily on at the moment.

Kudos must also go
to the Kelechi Mbagwu-led Friends of rugby. They did not allow their
loss to Racing Rugby at the bidding to derail their Lagos Union Rugby
League, which has helped in keeping our players busy.

That said, the
point cannot be overemphasised that the two parties must resist the
temptation to lapse back into a war of attrition. They must keep faith
with the agreements, which ushered in this new dispensation. There are
bound to be minor disagreements at this time; it is perfectly normal
for that to happen after all they have been engaged in conflict for two
years. The thing to do is show enough maturity to understand that no
one can have his way all the time. The overriding consideration at this
time should be how to re-integrate Nigerian rugby back into the
mainstream of global rugby from which it has been ostracized for the
last two years.

Aside our players getting a feel of international action, grants
from the IRB, no matter how little they are, will certainly go a long
way in easing the financial burdens of the NRFF.