Weekly Round-up (05/03/2012)

The world of the football was dominated this weekend by one story involving Chelsea and their former manager, Andre Villas-Boas. Following their shock defeat to West Brom at the weekend, the Blues moved fast to remove AVB from his post. The result left Chelsea in fifth place, 3 points behind Arsenal in the race for fourth. In a way, I can see reasons both for and against the departure of the Portuguese manager. One obvious reason for his sacking is that Chelsea have been under-performing this season, finding themselves in a battle for Champions League qualification rather than in a title race, as they would expect. However, AVB was in charge at a time when Chelsea need to go through a transition. The old guard of Mourinho's era are reaching the end of their careers and need to soon be replaced by youthful equivalents. In ways, Villas-Boas tried to achieve this with the signings of Romelu Lukaku and Oriol Romeu. Given time, the 34-year-old may have created a new team of star players. But we will now never know what he was capable of.

In rugby, there was the rearranged France-Ireland fixture from the Six Nations, which ended in a 17-all draw. It was an especially frustrating draw for the Irish, as their counter-attacking performance in the first-half was brilliant, and their defence in the last 15 minutes of the second-half was exceptional. A few moments of indecision prevented Ireland from gaining a very credible victory in Paris. The draw also means that only Wales can now win the Grand Slam. However, there is still the tantalising prospect of a title showdown with the French in Cardiff on the final day of this year's Six Nations.

To end with this week, some sad news regarding West Indian cricketer Runako Morton, who has died aged 33. Morton died after his car collided with a utility pole in central Trinidad. Morton never made much of an impact in the Test arena, top scoring with 70* despite being a specialist batsman. But it was a different story in one-day cricket, where he had a top score of 110 and an average of 33.75. Throughout his career, Morton flirted with controversy. He was banned from the West Indian cricketing academy in 2001 for bad behaviour and was arrested in January 2004 following an altercation which left his cousin with stab wounds. And just under a year ago, Morton was arrested under the suspicion of marijuana possession. However, he will always be remembered for his brilliance at the crease, and, in the words of former team-mate Chris Gayle, "We lost a true warrior".