Influential Manager Craig Kelly has called for the Australian Football League "to take charge of player agents," saying the game's head office "is better resourced and has more 'clout' to control unscrupulous managers."
Disenchanted by reports in recent days involving questionable behavior by player agents, Kelly on Tuesday "passed on to the agents' watchdog an allegation involving another manager who had in recent days approached a junior star player during the so-called 'blackout period.'" Kelly is in the process of writing to both the AFL Players Association and the AFL, "calling for change." He said, "The players association has got enough on its plate. The league is governing the game, then they should govern the game. We need to be policed and governed by someone with more clout" (THE AGE, 6/8).
The pressure is on for F1 "to take the moral high ground." Campaigners for human rights in Azerbaijan want F1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone "to denounce publicly" President Ilham Aliyev’s regime. They "will wait a long time."
There is "little doubt about Azerbaijan’s dubious record on human rights and the country’s desperate efforts to gain acceptance by staging major events." Ecclestone "insisted on a new set of criteria on which to judge the human rights records of states on F1’s calendar and it appears that Azerbaijan has passed the test, despite claims of political opponents being imprisoned, including journalists" (LONDON TIMES, 6/8).
The Int'l Cricket Council claimed "to have put measures in place to prevent evidence given in match-fixing investigations being made public following criticism from the former New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum."
McCullum "used his MCC Spirit of Cricket Lecture at Lord’s on Monday to chide the ICC for leaking a statement given against Chris Cairns to the media in 2014 ahead of the former all-rounder’s perjury trial in London last year, where he was found not guilty." The ICC said, "The ICC commended Brendon McCullum two years ago -- and continues to do so today -- for his brave, courageous and principled stand against corruption in cricket ... While the probe proved that the origin of the leak was not from within the ICC ... the ICC has already put strong measures in place to ensure this type of incident is never repeated" (London GUARDIAN, 6/8).
