RYDER CUP HEROES

"It was such a fine line between being the hero and the biggest idiot. Fortunately it went the right way." - Martin Kaymer reflects on the put that retained the Ryder Cup for Europe.

"When I was standing behind the ball and then when I bent down Bernhard's miss crossed my mind for half a second. But it didn't have any influence in a positive or negative way... If you stick to the facts it was the easiest putt you can have despite all the circumstances because it was uphill and an inside the right line. There is no easier putt. We have that putt millions of times and I had to

15-year-old Aleksandr Litvinenko has scored a contender for goal of the season after striking for his club FC Alushta Krym.

The captain, feted as one of his country's brightest prospects, flicked the ball from behind over his head, before unleashing a volley from 25 yards that left the goalkeeper without a chance of making a save.

It was a goal which deserved to win any game - but amazingly it didn't win this one - the match against Kirovograd finished in a 2-2 draw.

From the time that Czechoslovakian footballer Antonin Panenka chipped a penalty past the goalkeeper at the 1976 European Championships, footballers have tried to find any edge they can when shooting from the spot.

But while it's fantastic to try a cheeky trick when everything goes right - as Panenka, Andrea Pirlo or Johann Cruyff will testify - there's nothing quite so humiliating for a player as trying a trick that blows up in the perpetrator's faces.

And that's exactly what happened to St Gallen's Oscar Scarione and Pa Modou Jagne, who teamed up in a Swiss Super League match on Monday to

A former American footballer turned PE teacher is suing his employers after he was beaten up - by a six-year-old.

The unfortunate teacher is 27-year-old John Webster, who starred for his college football team before becoming a teacher in the New York borough of Queens.

Webster, who is 5'10" and tips the scales at 15 and a half stone, claims he was beaten up by six-year-old Rodrigo Carpio, who is 4'2" and weighs less than four stone. The teacher was apparently left with a fractured ankle, a badly-injured knee and stress so bad that he had to visit a psychiatrist after being terrorised by the

HJK Helsinki midfielder Juho Makela scored a critical but controversial goal in a Finnish top-flight match against FC Haka. Why controversial? Because there were two separate matches going on simultaneously.

Confused? So were most of the players involved, but the referee was unaware that there were two balls on the pitch at the same time, and that half the footballers (and all the TV cameras) were focused on a mundane throw-in on the halfway line.

Almost unbelievably, referee Mikko Lehtola awarded the goal - and in a quite staggering display of obstinacy then refused to listen to any of the

The man in charge of the cheerleaders at the World Twenty20 cricket tournament in Sri Lanka has admitted the girls are not as "beautiful" as he would have liked.

Sudev Abeysekarara said that he has done the best he can with the girls at his disposal but that financial concerns have limited the impact he would have liked to have made at the tournament.

"The dance steps being performed are fine. But the thing is that in an event like this you need good looking girls, and to get the beautiful girls who are professional dancers, you have to pay more. The payment is not that great," he told the

The Buffalo Bill Downhill is a treacherous skateboarding race in its third year in Golden, Colorado, and while buffaloes are not considered among the obstacles as skaters charge down a steep mountain road at break-neck speeds, deer ought to be.

The accompanying footage shows competitor Ryan Vitale racing downhill at 45 mph before being tackled by a deer charging across the road.

The incident occurred just as Vitale and his fellow competitors were approaching the most daunting feature on the course, a 180-degree turn called "The Gooch." Miraculously, Vitale was uninjured (save for scrapes and

A school in Swindon has gone to the drastic step of demanding all parents get criminal background checks before they can watch their kids play sport.

The Isambard Community School said they had implemented the measure so that children would be protected from potential paedophiles.

"It is with regret that from now on we will be unable to accommodate parents wishing to spectate at our sports fixtures unless they are in possession of an up-to-date Swindon Council CRB check," a spokesperson for the school said.

"At Isambard we take safeguarding very seriously and because of this we are unable to