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BBC News
39 minutes ago
- BBC News
Rangers track Mbuyamba & Celtic explore Edouard return
Xavier Mbuyamba is on the radar of Rangers, Gent and English clubs after Volendam opened the door to a sale of the former Chelsea centre-half for £433,000 after the 23-year-old Dutchman refused to extend his current contract. (Fabrizio Romano on X), externalTwente Enschede sports director Jan Streuer says "a solution will have to be found quickly" after the £1.5m transfer of Robin Propper from Rangers stalled with the 31-year-old centre-half waiting to reach an agreement over the remainder of his Ibrox contract. (Daily Record), externalZulte Waregem and Westerlo are both interested in taking 21-year-old Rangers centre-half Clinton Nsiala on loan. (Daily Record), externalDanilo scored and provided three assists as Rangers beat Dunfermline Athletic 4-1 in a closed doors friendly. (Sun), externalCeltic have been in contact with Odsonne Edouard's agents as they explore a return for the striker who left for Crystal Palace in 2021 in a £15m deal and could be available for a similar fee as the Eagles look to offload the 25-year-old. (TeamTalk), externalAnd Celtic are exploring the conditions of a deal for 21-year-old Cercle Brugge left-back Nazinho, although the Scottish champions have yet to make an official offer. (Anthony Joseph on X), externalMeanwhile, Celtic are in talks with another Scottish Championship club about a co-operation agreement after discussions with Queen's Park stalled. (Sun), external St Mirren are poised to complete signing of 22-year-old Jamaican winger Jalmaro Calvin, who played alongside new signing Richard King at Cavalier. (David Irvine on X), externalSt Johnstone hope to sign Stevie Mallan after the 29-year-old midfielder impressed in Tuesday's friendly against Dundee United. (The Courier - subscription required), externalKyle Vassell has agreed terms with Colorado Switchbacks and the 32-year-old striker is expected to sign until the end of the 2026 season after rejecting an approach from Dundee United following his exit from Kilmarnock. (Sky Sports), external
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Dad who took his son on golfing trip of a lifetime hits a hole-in-one - and what happened next has left the sport in disbelief
An Auckland father and son duo have defied unbelievable odds to produce one of the most remarkable moments of their lives by hitting consecutive aces while on a golfing holiday. Jim Rohrstaff, a 46-year-old former club professional, had been traveling around Scotland with his wife Kara and sons Blake and Eric, playing at different courses along the way. Last Saturday, they arrived at the historic Cullen Links and could not in a million years have anticipated what would happen next. Rohrstaff and Blake, 18, made double bogeys at the seventh hole before walking up to the 255m (279-yard) par-four eighth. 'I hit driver and my ball actually landed just left of the green in the left rough, but it was a bit of a slope and it kicked right towards the green and that's all we saw,' Rohrstaff told the New Zealand Herald. 'We could see the green, but from 255m you don't see exactly where the ball is settling.' Blake stepped up next with his driver and told the group he was going to hit a 'a little bullet'. 'He hit his driver and it landed on the front left side of the green and kind of bounced, released and ran just past the pin and then it started to roll back a little bit, but again didn't really think much of it,' Jim Rohrstaff explained. The group approached the green, but could only see the ball that had been hit by Rohrstaff's youngest son, Eric. 'I walk up, and I'm in the left rough, just above the bunker, and I look around for a second. It's wide open. I'm like, where the heck's my golf ball?' he told 'So I'm looking around a little bit, and because there's only one ball on the green, and I'm like, well, where the heck am I? I thought, you know, I'm either on the green or I'm here on the left side and got stuck in the rough.' That's when Eric made an incredible discovery in the cup. 'Oh, well there are two here,' Eric said. Rohrstaff was perplexed. The odds of two golfers making an ace on the same hole are 17million-to-one. 'He's like, there's two balls. And he wasn't excited at all. He's like, there's two balls right here. And we're like, "shut up". 'So of course, we go walking over there, Kara's got her phone out, and, I mean, I started hopping around like an idiot. And we just, we just kind of went nuts. And it was just, it was, and I'm still a bit shell-shocked.' 'That was my 11th hole in one. That's Blake's first one. I've obviously never had one on a par 4. So, I mean, it was just the silliest, most ridiculous thing I've ever seen, heard of or experienced on a golf course. It was nuts.' Blake said it took him a while to 'connect the dots'. 'I heard Dad say there was a ball in there, and I thought it was just his. And he was like, "No, we're both in here." And I started going monkeys as well.' The family continued the celebrations when they made it back to the clubhouse, with Rohrstaff admitting he had trouble sleeping that night while thinking about the rare event. 'I still can't get my head around it. It's the most insane thing I've ever heard of, and if I weren't there, I wouldn't believe it myself,' he said.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Win-or-bust tie with Panathinaikos is coming a little too quickly for Rangers boss Martin, writes John McGarry
Rangers' impending Champions League qualifier against Panathinaikos almost feels like a rude interruption this summer. The town of Portrush won't even be back to normal after the conclusion of The Open on Monday by the time Russell Martin takes his seat in the media room at Auchenhowie ahead of the first leg of his side's second qualifying round tie the following evening. The days when football traditionally cleared the stage for other sports for a couple of months are well gone. Martin could be forgiven for feeling this game is all coming a little too quickly. He was appointed Barry Ferguson's successor on June 5. The players only returned for pre-season training on June 23 and there's been a whirlwind of transfer activity since then, predominately incoming. Now here we are, in the middle of July, contemplating a match of the utmost importance at the start of a new era. For all Philippe Clement endured the nightmare of the Ibrox building works fiasco last summer, he at least had a tasty trip to Tynecastle to get his teeth into before his side faced Dynamo Kyiv in the Polish city of Lublin. Martin will have had friendlies against Club Brugge and Barnsley and some closed-door matches before getting down to business. You can do as many double training sessions as you like in the heat of St George's Park. Nothing prepares players for competitive matches quite like competitive matches. The history books are littered with tales of near misses and calamities for Scottish clubs at this brutally early juncture and Rangers have many of their own entries that they'd rather forget. In 1998, Dick Advocaat's expensively assembled squad took the field for the first time against Irish side Shelbourne at Tranmere's Prenton Park. They were three goals down to the part-time outfit inside an hour before finding their sea legs and rallying to a 5-3 win. A decade on, fresh from losing the UEFA Cup final to Zenit St Petersburg in Manchester, Walter Smith's men crashed out of the Champions League by losing 2-1 away to FBK Kaunas after a goalless home leg. 'From the sublime to the ridiculous,' he said ruefully that night in Lithuania. Most infamously, eight years ago, Pedro Caixinha's trip to Luxembourg ended in abject humiliation as he stood in shrubbery while remonstrating with irate supporters. Progres Niedercorn's aggregate triumph was even more remarkable for the fact that Rangers narrowly won the first leg in Glasgow. Even with that game against Hearts cutting the ribbon on last season, Clement's side still came up short against a Kyiv side whose limitations were laid bare by their eventual 34th-place finish in a 36-team Europa League group. Dynamo were then ranked 77th in UEFA's club rankings and have since slipped to 113th. Panathinaikos are currently 94th, up 17 places in the space of a year on the back of an impressive run to the last 16 of the Conference League. Everything points towards them being a tougher nut to crack. While Martin will take a sliver of encouragement from knowing the Greeks don't start their own league campaign until the third week in August, they are coming off an arduous pre-season in Austria which has seen them go toe-to-toe with the likes of Schalke and Braga. Rui Vitoria's team finished second behind Olympiacos in the title race last season and boast a string of class acts including Serbian international attacker Filip Duricic. The task of progressing to the next qualifying round certainly feels a long way from the one presented by Macedonian hopefuls Shkupi in 2018, notably the last occasion a Rangers manager - namely Steven Gerrard - made his debut in Europe. Frankly, if any occupant of the Ibrox hot seat has faced a tougher opening-night assignment down the years, then no-one can quite recall it. Martin will need all his experienced players to step up to the plate. Although Leon Balogun and Vaclav Cerny, two of last year's better performers, have moved on, there is still the core of the team which reached the quarter finals of the Europa League last season - Cyriel Dessers, James Tavernier and John Souttar. Speculation linking Dessers with a move to AEK Athens continues to swirl around but, as things stand, the forward will be travelling to that sprawling city as a Rangers player. Aside from Dessers' goals, you can understand Martin's reluctance to part with the 30-year-old. Only one of the seven players he has has signed to date - Nasser Djiga - has previously sampled European football while playing for Red Star Belgrade. In contrast, a Panathinaikos side which held its own against the likes of Ajax and Lens last season, is brimming with seasoned operators at that level. Max Aarons and Joe Rothwell, who have both joined Rangers from Premier League Bournemouth, would be expected to immediately look at home on the European stage. Djeidi Gassama, who has just joined from Sheffield Wednesday in the Championship, should also comfortably make the step-up if available and selected. But it remains to be seen how Thelo Aasgaard and Emmanuel Fernandez, both of whom were playing in the English third tier with Luton and Peterborough respectively last season, bridge the obvious jump in quality. The same applies to Lyall Cameron - notably the only Scot among Martin's seven summer recruits. Demonstrably good enough to play in the Premiership during his time with Dundee, the 22-year-old must also show he can cut it on the continental stage. Tasked with changing the fortunes of a team who have become strangers to success in recent times, Martin had no choice but to change so much of the personnel in little over a month. Although still shy of the round dozen players Clement brought in last summer, he's thrown a lot of darts at the board. Football being football, chances are not all of them will stick. By the time his side leave the Ibrox arena for the first time next week, though, it's imperative that their trip to Greece for the second leg counts for something. The group stage of the Champions League is primarily where Rangers' new American owners feel they can make good on their investment. No matter how arduous this task appears for the new man at the helm, a failure to clear the first hurdle is clearly not in their thinking.
