Australia

Officials from the Australian state of Victoria will lobby the country?s rugby union body to convince them that the fourth Australian Super 12 rugby union team must be located in Melbourne and not in Sydney's western suburbs.

The Australian Rugby Union is hoping to receive a war chest to finance its push into Sydney?s western suburbs when it meets with International Rugby Board chairman Vernon Pugh in Sydney this week.

Australian rugby league star Wendell Sailor?s defection to rugby union has put pressure on the ARU to increase players? base payments.

The president of AFL club Carlton, John Elliott, has summoned all his counterparts to a meeting in Melbourne next Tuesday with a view to challenging the existing AFL Commission.

Australia?s Federal Government has committed Aus$1m to work in partnership with Australia?s sport and leisure industry to boost growth in exports and jobs.

The IOC has told organisers of the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens to speed up their efforts.

Competitors at an athletics competition have been critical of the demands placed on them by live cable television coverage.

An independent firm of consultants are to be appointed by the SANZAR unions (South Africa, New Zealand and Australia) to examine the possibility of expanding the Super 12 competition to include more teams.

China urged International Olympic Committee (IOC) delegates arriving on Monday to assess Beijing's bid for the 2008 Games to focus on its credentials as a "sports superpower of 1.2 billion people", not its human rights record.

The Australian Football League has confirmed that Carlton & United Breweries would replace Coca-Cola as the AFL's naming rights sponsor from this year in a four-year deal, as reported by sportbusiness.com last week.

THE list of sporting events that should be available first on free-to-air television may be revised after an investigation by the Australian Broadcasting Authority.

The AFL is on the verge of signing a lucrative new deal with Carlton and United Breweries in a naming rights sponsorship valued at A$35 million (US$18.5m) over five years.

Troubled sports and entertainment internet group Quokka Sports has been forced to lay off 59 percent of its 369 employees.

The AFL has had a much-needed sponsorship boost as the league and naming-rights backer Coca-Cola denied their relationship would end prematurely.

Israel's government has reached a $4 million settlement to compensate an Australian athlete injured in a 1997 sporting event near Tel Aviv, an Israeli source said on Tuesday. Sasha Elterman of Australia was seriously injured when a pedestrian bridge rigged for athletes competing in the Maccabiah "Jewish Olympics" collapsed and swept them into the polluted Yarkon River.

Six months ago, the news that Britain was to challenge for the 2003 America's Cup would have caused barely a ripple of interest in the nation.