Motorsport madness, James Rodríguez and the kicker that did it all

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/oct/16/classic-youtube-brawl-streaker-kicker-james-rodriguez

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1) James Rodríguez’s first few months at Real Madrid have been a little up and down, but the boy’s definitely still got it when he puts on a Colombia shirt. Woof, woof and thrice woof. Could probably have done without the happy hardcore production on the commentary, mind you.

2) To Spanish off-road rallycross, and the aftermath from a driving incident: a flying karate kick to the midriff. Meanwhile in Nascar, Matt Kenseth pulled off this sneak WWE-style attack on fellow driver Brad Keselowski. So much so, it’s inevitably got its own JR version.

3) When you’re an American football kicker, your job is generally to boot the thing down the field, and then go and sit down for a bit. Not the tautologically-named William Will of the University of Dayton though, who did his job, then recovered a fumble on the return and, well, did this. On the subject of kickers, Isaac Lufkin didn’t let being born without arms stop him from taking up the role. He wants to do more, too.

4) Fresh from the schadenfreude department, France Under-21 defender Layvin Kurzawa decided to celebrate taking his side through to the European Championships by taunting his Swedish opponents with a strange salute celebration thing. The only issue was, they hadn’t quite won yet, and a few minutes later the Swedes turned things around with a goal of their own, and celebrated in the only appropriate manner.

5) Ben Flower is serving his time for dishing out pain against the rules of rugby league, but if you want to do so and not get banned for six months then perhaps he should take notes from Timana Tahu, who put the hurt on Jack de Belin in quite a big way. So big, in fact, that De Belin deposited his lunch in several instalments on the turf, much to the amusement of both crowd and commentators.

6) The MLB playoffs are well under way, and Kansas City Royals third-baseman Mike Moustakas celebrated by taking a rather absurd catch while falling into the crowd. It certainly went better than the last time he tried that, anyway. His team-mate Lorenzo Cain is pretty decent with the glove as well. In the National League Division Series, the San Francisco Giants and the Washington Nationals took 18 innings to decide their game - the longest playoff game of all time. And it wouldn’t be a baseball roundup if there wasn’t a bench-clearing brawl. Finally, watch the final pitch of every World Series for the last 25 (ish) years.

Our favourites from last week’s blog

1) Ever wondered what it would be like to see a pile-up in a road cycling race from an on-bike camera? Wonder no more, friends.

2) Some people inspire great poetry. Juan Román Riquelme inspires slightly sinister-sounding but actually pretty good ambient music.

3) And sure, Riquelme’s pretty good, but can he control a long pass on the back of his head then casually volley the thing in from range?

4) Someone below the line last week wasn’t happy that the Guardian didn’t mention the Giro di Lombardia, so here’s Dan Martin winning the thing in a frantic downhill finish.

5) Goals from the halfway line quite simply will never get old. Here’s one by Steve Devlin for Poole Town against Truro City.

6) Ask Mario Götze a stupid question (or at least a question you know won’t get a friendly response), then get a stupid answer (or at least no answer at all).

Spotters’ badges: LKeet6, AdmiralCrunch, PizzaRe, cr0nus, richardsmall and ScunnyBunny.

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