Mad Dog Game

The Catalans trailed by 14 points at half-time; Two tries from Matt Whitley, plus one apiece from Sam Tomkins, Mickaehl Goudemand, Fouad Yaha and the goal-kicking of Arthur Mourgue sealed their 10th win in a row

Catalans Dragons came back from the dead for the third week in a row with a second-half blitz which blew away Hull Kingston Rovers at Stade Gilbert Brutus.

Scrum-half Jordan Abdull bombarded the table-topping French side with a series of high bombs to put Rovers 14 points in front at half-time but it was not enough to resist a late onslaught from the table-topping Dragons which took them to a club-record 10 wins in a row with a 32-30 victory.

The Dragons are becoming the comeback kings of Super League but they were made to fight all the way by a stand-in Rovers side, who stepped onto the aeroplane to France following the withdrawal of Castleford Tigers due to Covid-19 problems.

Ring-rusty Rovers, who had not played in five weeks, were full value for their 26-12 lead but they seemed to wilt in the heat of a red-hot second-half performance from Catalans.

Rovers were first to score when Jordan Abdull followed up a powerful break by Brad Takairangi and Jez Litten. Abdull brushed off three tackles to cross the line after five minutes and converting his own try.

But loose-forward Dean Hadley dropped the ball on his own 30-metre line and Dragons’ second row Matt Whitley gleefully collected to stroll unhindered between the posts, Arthur Mourgue converting to level it at 6-6.

The Robins hit back on 20 minutes when Shaun Kenny-Dowall mopped up a fumbled high kick by Tom Davies to cross the line, Abdull converting to make it 12-6 but Sam Tomkins struck back for the hosts with a side-stepping dash to the left of the posts for a try, Mourgue converting to level the scores once more.

Abdull struck a penalty goal on the half-hour to put Rovers in front but the arrival of giant prop Sam Kasiano from the bench seemed to spark the Dragons.

Abdull soon put it out with a towering bomb that bamboozled Tomkins for Greg Minikin to collect and swoop between the sticks, Abdull adding the conversion to make it 20-12 four minutes before half-time.

But Rovers had not clocked off, Adam Quinlan raced 50 metres and shrugged off Tomkins to score, Abdull again converting for an interval scoreline of 26-12.

Whitley picked up his second try of the game following a clever pass from Mourgue then Abdull matched him with his second touchdown after the Dragons were pegged back by two penalties in a row. Abdull could not convert but Rovers were 30-18 ahead.

The Dragons’ comeback begun when Kasiano found Mickael Goudemand with a slick pass on 51 minutes to put the French international second-row over the line, Mourgue adding the conversion to narrow the gap.

A string of penalties pegged Rovers back and Mike McMeeken went close, then Tom Davies almost scored before Rovers were forced into a goal-line drop-out.

Catalans turned up the heat when Tomkins drifted left and passed to Benjamin Jullien who put winger Fouad Yaha in at the left corner, Mourgue’s touchline conversion levelling the scores at 30-30 with 15 minutes left.

Mourgue put Catalans ahead for the first time in the game with a 70th-minute penalty as the 30-degree heat began to take its toll on Rovers and it was enough for the league leaders to hang on for their 10th win in a row.

The Matildas have dropped crucial points in the second match of their Olympics campaign, going down 4-2 to Sweden after a late capitulation.

In a see-sawing affair, both sides traded the lead late deep into the second half despite the Aussies scrambling at times to keep their heads above water under the wealth of Swedish possession at Saitama Stadium.

But it would all come undone for the Matildas when skipper Sam Kerr, who had scored two headers to keep her side in the game, missed a crucial penalty from the spot in the 69th minute.

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The rare blip from the Aussie superstar allowed the Swedes to hold on to a slender 3-2 lead, before over-running the Matildas to wrap up the game 4-2 by the final whistle.

“I thought it was a really good save, probably not the best penalty. I apologised to the girls but that’s football,” Kerr said at full-time.

“We missed one, myself. So yeah, at the end of the day we lost which is disappointing.”

The loss means Australia will need to pick up points against the USA in their next match, setting up a blockbuster encounter to decide who will progress out of Group G.

Sweden is now 8-1-4 against Australia since 1995. The two sides previously played to a scoreless draw in June in a friendly.

Australia was coming off a 2-1 victory over New Zealand in its opener. It was the Matildas’ first win of 2021.

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The British and Irish Lions have roared back to beat world champions South Africa 22-17 in a Cape Town comeback win, with Dan Biggar’s boot proving the key. [Read more…] about Lions roar back to down Springboks in first Test

Games like Valorant don’t just live and die off of their huge playerbases—they also rely on premium, top-tier cosmetics to drive revenue and fund new characters for the growingly popular tactical shooter from the company that brought you League of Legends.

At the 2021 Game Developers conference, producer Preeti Khanolkar and art lead Sean Marino teamed up to pull back the curtain slightly on Valorant’s cosmetics production process. Their talk (aimed at producers and art leads in collaboration) explored how Riot balances its resources to produce its animation-intensive, aesthetically unique products, using the Elderflame and Reaver cosmetics sets as key examples.

The pair’s first example came from the Elderflame skin—an exceptionally expensive weapon skin that trades several Valorant guns’ normal reloading and firing animations for ones that look more like a dragon acting as a living weapon.

Marino said the team’s inspiration came from the variety of dragon-themed cosmetics in other shooters, which mostly looked like scaly models of pre-existing guns—the most lavish of them might have a sculpture on the barrel, but the fundamental shape remained the same.

He also brought up one immediate challenge that raised the bar for what Valorant would need to do with its cosmetics. Because the game comes from the same company behind League of Legends, there was a player expectation to match the lavish, intricately animated skins seen in the company’s flagship game.

But Valorant, being first-person, opted away from character skins in favor of the weapon skins, and an intricate, high-animation gun skin presents a number of problems. The pair identified one early challenge when the team began work on a reload animation. The concept art resembled a smoldering fire dragon, while the early animation looked like a cute grubby lizard holding an egg.

“That brought up an interesting point,” Marino said “which is that we were trying to bring something inanimate to life. It has a personality whether we want it to or not.”

With 4 guns in the skin set, this meant each skin could have its own personality. So the “cute” animation survived, just on a different weapon.

“It was a good exploration for us to dive deeper into what a skin is,” he explained.

The final result served as a strong contrast to what “dragon-themed” skins typically look like. The one on the left was a living creature, the one on the right felt like van art stapled onto a shotgun.

Khanolkar stepped in to raise two production concerns: first, these time-consuming skins needed to be made alongside a whole other pipeline of content. Second, they weren’t sure if players would fully understand why they were suddenly carrying a dragon instead of a gun—would they even want these dragon guns?

Luckily it turned out, dragons are indeed very rad, and by launching these weapons early in Valorant’s life, Khanolkar said the team was able to convince stakeholders by making the skins a selling point—that Elderflame would be just the first of other high-quality skins to come down the pipe.

Next the pair moved on to discussing the Reaver skin set’s origins—the first weapon cosmetics made for Valorant. Marino explained that at this point the team didn’t even know what players wanted out of cosmetics or if they’d want a fantasy skin laid on top of modern-looking tactical weapons.

“Let’s just put a generic fantasy skin on a weapon and see if players respond to it,” he said, in a description of the process.

Khanolkar said this gave a chance for the team to learn what players wanted out of skins—did they want simple, unflashy weapons, or did they want unique animations and sound effects?

This led to some interesting findings—like the fact that some advanced animations could be misleading. Players might not feel a gun was ready to shoot, or it might slower even though it was literally the same time. “It felt pay-to-lose,” she deadpanned.

What surprised the team was that players did respond strongly to “evolving skins”—skins that changed shape and gained new forums as players completed more in-game challenges.

Reaver wasn’t planned to be included in a formal launch, and was only made available in Valorant’s Closed Beta to show off what was possible with skins. It remained unpopular for some of the reasons mentioned above—but then Valorant launched, and suddenly players were begging Riot to put Reaver back in the game.

“’Bring back Reaver’ became a meme!” Khanolkar said with exasperation. She said they even got queries during press interviews about it. She described there being two ways to re-include Reaver—one of them being “the wrong way.” The wrong way, in her words, would just be to re-ship the skin pack and charge players for it with no changes.

“The right way is a lot harder than the wrong way,” she explained. And the right way here was re-doing the Reaver skin to mirror the standards of skins like the Elderflame skin.

But there was stress from all the player interest in the skin—as speculation about the skin grew, the team began to recognize that player nostalgia and self-driven hype would not satisfy players.

This all came to head in a marketing meeting where the team was discussing the pack’s imminent relaunch. Khanolkar expressed worry over the player reception, especially with all the changes that had been done to the skin. Marino jumped in to ask what exactly she felt wrong about it, and clarify what changes had impacted the mood.

After A/B testing on a mood board, he realized her concern was over a very subtle effect—the animation included more pink than the original dark and moody purple.

The fix was equally surprising—Marino brought the skins back to a VFX artist, who pitched swinging the color in the complete opposite direction—pure black effects.

Khanolkar said that looking back, a core issue that led to this conflict was worrying over being a producer who, with little understanding to art, dictated artistic choices to the art team. Marino’s decision to solicit direct feedback from her helped the team course correct—to acclaim from players.

Marino said there were lessons for artists in this process too. “If people are giving you feedback, do your best to understand where they’re coming from,” he said. “If someone [on your team] is coming to you as a player, and saying something’s wrong…you need to give them the space to be honest with you.”

Khanolkar and Marino’s talk was ultimately one about navigating different kinds of trust—trust in your team, trusting your gut, and trusting your creative partners. But amidst the trust, the pair also uncovered key lessons from the cosmetic design process that can be applied to any live game, to help create standout cosmetics your players will resonate with and enjoy purchasing.

TOKYO — Devin Booker, Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday arrived in Japan on a private jet just before 11 p.m. Saturday, less than 24 hours before Team USA opens Olympic play against France in a vital game out of the gate.

It was a brutal travel day after an exhausting playoff stretch, and the combination will test their mental and physical stamina. It also won the extreme respect of their American teammates.

“I have a lot of respect for those guys for not only committing to do this but actually keeping their word,” Team USA forward Draymond Green said. “You’re talking about three true professionals, three extremely competitive guys that wouldn’t be on their way here if this didn’t mean something.”

As the American team got together to watch NBA Finals games during training camp in Las Vegas and after flying to Japan, they speculated about the possibility that one or more of the three might beg off after such an extreme turnaround. But all three repeatedly stood by their commitment. On Friday afternoon, Booker took a plane from Phoenix and Middleton and Holiday, less than a day after their championship parade, took one from Milwaukee.

They met up at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, not as the competitors they were for the previous two weeks but as teammates. After refueling, they got on the long-range plane for a nine-hour trip across the Pacific through the night.

“We could’ve very easily got to the last game … and Devin Booker saying, ‘Man, we lost, I’m pissed off, I’m out,’ or Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday saying, ‘We just won a championship, I want to celebrate and stay home with my family, I’m out,'” Green said. “It’s on us to make sure that we do our parts to make sure they’re rewarded with what they ultimately came here for, which is to help us to compete and win a gold medal.”

It is unclear how much coach Gregg Popovich can rely on the three to play, but he indicated that his plan is to use them against the French, who project to be the toughest matchup the Americans will face in a pool-play round that also includes games against Iran and the Czech Republic.

“We obviously know they’re in shape. They’re tired. They just went through a roller coaster of emotion,” Team USA guard Zach LaVine said. “I think they’ll be ready to go, and we’ll see what happens. But as for the team, I think we need to be ready for everything. If they’re not ready to go, then we have to go out there and perform still.”

After Team USA finished seventh at the World Cup in China in 2019, when France knocked it off the medal stand in the quarterfinals, and lost two exhibition games in Las Vegas, the team’s reputation has taken some hits. But despite challenges with COVID-19 protocols, injuries and little time to bond, it will have 12 healthy players and a formidable talent pool ready to try to reestablish dominance.

“As much as it sucks to lose, those two losses only helped us,” Green said. “They didn’t hurt us one bit. If anything, maybe you lost a little bit of the fear that we’ve had in people’s hearts for years. Which you go out and do what you’ve got to do and you can get that right back.”

Celtic’s preparations for their crunch midweek Champions League qualifier against Midtjylland took a knock with a 6-2 friendly defeat by West Ham.

Hoops skipper Callum McGregor curled in an early opener before Hammers striker Michail Antonio scored a quick-fire double and captain Mark Noble netted from the penalty spot.

Ryan Christie pulled a goal back for Ange Postecoglou’s side five minutes after the break but Said Benrahma replied for West Ham and Celtic then made 10 substitutions before Jarrod Bowen and substitute Armstrong Okoflex, signed from Celtic this summer, added two more.

Postecoglou now has to get his players ready for the second leg of their second qualifier on Wednesday night after a 1-1 draw against the Danish side during the week, and the tightening of defence will be a priority.

West Ham looked sharp, particularly on the counter, and will carry on preparing for their Premier League opener away to Newcastle next month.

Issa Diop replaced Angelo Ogbonna, who limped off injured just before McGregor easily brushed Manuel Lanzini off the ball and guided a shot from the edge of the box past goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski.

West Ham levelled when Dane Murray’s pass out from the back was intercepted by Noble, who quickly moved the ball on to Antonio and he skilfully side-stepped defender Stephen Welsh and Barkas and rolled the ball into an empty net.

Pablo Fornals then sent the striker clear for a breakaway second when he split the Celtic defence with a pass and Antonio steered his shot from 12 yards past Barkas at the near post.

Noble scored a third from the spot in the 38th minute after referee John Beaton felt Antonio had been barged in the box by Celtic midfielder Ismaila Soro.

Both teams changed their goalkeepers at the start of the second half, Scott Bain replacing Barkas and Darren Randolph on for Fabianski, and the former Motherwell ‘keeper failed to keep out Christie’s close-range prod from a Liel Abada cross.

He did tip a Christie effort over the crossbar moments later before the visitors countered again and restored their two-goal lead through a composed Benrahma finish.

Postecoglou changed all of his outfield players and one of them, Leigh Griffiths, recently cleared by police over allegations of sending inappropriate messages to two schoolgirls, was initially booed by a section of the home support.

Some fans then cheered Griffiths but attention soon turned back to the game and Bowen was able to flick a cross past Bain before Okoflex wrapped up the scoring with a low drive into the corner of the net.

Man Utd humbled by QPR

Manchester United endured a torrid afternoon in west London as Championship side QPR secured a resounding 4-2 victory to deal a blow to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s team’s pre-season preparations.

In what was a lively atmosphere at the Kiyan Prince Foundation Stadium, Jesse Lingard gave Manchester United the lead after just three minutes, but it lasted just four minutes as Charlie Austin’s header brought the hosts level.

On the day Solskjaer was celebrating a new contract at Old Trafford, his afternoon turned sour as QPR ran riot at the start of the second half.

Mark Warburton’s side scored three goals in eight minutes through substitute Lydon Dykes (53, 59) and Moses Odubajo (58) to leave the home fans in party mood.

Substitute Anthony Elanga pulled a goal back for the visitors, but it only proved to be a consolation as Solskjaer and his team were handed a significant wake-up call ahead of the new Premier League campaign.

Elsewhere…

Arsenal were 4-1 winners against Millwall in their pre-season friendly at London Colney.

The Gunners postponed their trip to Florida on Tuesday, and Mikel Arteta played many of his big-name players against the Sky Bet Championship side.

Indeed, it was Arsenal captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang who had a hand in the opener, with his superb overhead kick hitting the crossbar, only to be nodded home by Calum Chambers.

In the second half, Alexandre Lacazette, Nicolas Pepe and Leon Balogun fired Arsenal into a 4-0 lead, before Alex Mitchell tapped home a consolation for Millwall.

Leicester were beaten on penalties by Burton Albion in their first pre-season game.

Summer signings Ryan Bertrand, Boubakary Soumare and Patson Daka were all handed their first starts in a Leicester shirt, but the game was goalless after 90 minutes.

To determine the winner of the Bass Charity Vase, the game went to a penalty shootout. Luke Thomas and Thanawat Suengchitthawon saw their spot-kicks saved, while Kelechi Iheanacho sent his penalty wide, with Burton winning the shootout 3-1.

Southampton drew 1-1 with Fulham at their Staplewood Campus. Michael Obafemi’s half-time introduction had an immediate impact, with his squared pass turned home by Shane Long in the 47th minute.

But Marco Silva’s side equalised late on. They were awarded a penalty when Anthony Knockaert was fouled by Moussa Djenepo, with Neeskens Kebano converting from the spot.

Aston Villa were beaten 2-0 by Stoke at the bet365 Stadium, ending the game with ten men.

Steven Fletcher’s header gave Stoke a third-minute lead, before a super strike from Mario Vrancic doubled the Potters’ lead. Villa played the final 23 minutes with ten men after Wesley – who had only been on the field for seven minutes – was sent off after an altercation with Nick Powell.

Patrick Viera’s Crystal Palace picked up a second pre-season win, beating Ipswich 1-0 at Portman Road.

After a goalless first half, Wilfried Zaha was fouled inside the area and then dispatched the penalty for the only goal of the game. New signing Marc Guehi also made his first appearance for Palace, coming on as a 64th-minute substitute.

Jay Rodriguez scored his third pre-season goal in two games, while Lewis Richardson netted his first senior goal as Burnley beat Oldham 2-0.

One thousand away fans made the trip to Boundary Park, with both goals coming in the second half. Rodriguez turned the first home from close range after Bobby Thomas header, adding to his two goals against Salford City last week.

Shortly after. Rodriguez was involved again to set up Richardson for a memorable moment. The striker’s effort was saved by the goalkeeper, with Richardson there to turn home the rebound.

Watford and West Brom played out a goalless draw at Vicarage Road, with the Baggies keeping a third successive pre-season clean sheet.

The Matildas have dropped crucial points in the second match of their Olympics campaign, going down 4-2 to Sweden after a late capitulation.

In a see-sawing affair, both sides traded the lead late deep into the second half despite the Aussies scrambling at times to keep their heads above water under the wealth of Swedish possession at Saitama Stadium.

But it would all come undone for the Matildas when skipper Sam Kerr, who had scored two headers to keep her side in the game, missed a crucial penalty from the spot in the 69th minute.

OLYMPICS LIVE BLOG: DAY 1 UPDATES, NEWS, RESULTS | GALLERY: TOKYO OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY

The rare blip from the Aussie superstar allowed the Swedes to hold on to a slender 3-2 lead, before over-running the Matildas to wrap up the game 4-2 by the final whistle.

“I thought it was a really good save, probably not the best penalty. I apologised to the girls but that’s football,” Kerr said at full-time.

“We missed one, myself. So yeah, at the end of the day we lost which is disappointing.”

The loss means Australia will need to pick up points against the USA in their next match, setting up a blockbuster encounter to decide who will progress out of Group G.

Sweden is now 8-1-4 against Australia since 1995. The two sides previously played to a scoreless draw in June in a friendly.

Australia was coming off a 2-1 victory over New Zealand in its opener. It was the Matildas’ first win of 2021.

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