F-B-F.org -

There was a sign of the times on Sunday when Manchester United’s programme listed forthcoming fixtures. The date printed was not next week, or even the week after, but more than a month away, when the treble-winners’ League campaign resumes against Arsenal. Platt is willing to pay around £500,000 for the former Notts County player, who still lives in the city.. If the South Africans make the later stages, it will also put him out of contention for the Coventry and Newcastle games.
Nottingham Forest’s manager, David Platt, is trying to sign Sheffield United’s Shaun Berry. He has other goalkeeping options but Bosnich is his No 1, Farina having stood by him when he was out of favour at Old Trafford and given him the captaincy.
United already face losing the striker Dwight Yorke for at least the Newcastle game because of Trinidad and Tobago’s Gold Cup commitments in America, and their South African forward, Quinton Fortune, will be away for the African Nations’ Cup, from 22 January to 13 February.
When United play Arsenal in the Premiership next month, Fortune will be playing for his country in Ghana and Nigeria.

Manchester United could lose Mark Bosnich for three Premiership matches in February because Australia want their goalkeeper for a friendly tournament in Chile. Manchester United could lose Mark Bosnich for three Premiership matches in February because Australia want their goalkeeper for a friendly tournament in Chile.

Australia’s coach, Frank Farina, has named Bosnich in his squad and wants his captain to travel to South America at a time when he would have been lining up for United against Coventry City, Newcastle United and Wimbledon. The tournament in Chile, though important to Australia’s World Cup preparations, is a casual affair in which Australia will play the hosts a couple of times and possibly meet other sides.
Bosnich could become a frequent long-haul flier, because United will be in Brazil for the World Team Championship next month and the Australian could then find himself heading back halfway across the world when his country calls.
Farina has already run into problems with Rangers after requesting Craig Moore and Tony Vidmar, but the coach is taking a hard line. More than a dozen world records were broken, including by Thorpe, South Africa’s Penny Heyns and American Lenny Krayzelburg.
Almost all venues have been completed, and a comprehensive test event schedule is about half way through and on track to have every venue tried out by the time the Games start on September 15.
Sports-mad at the worst of times, Australia had an exceptional year in 1999, winning world cups in cricket and rugby, tennis’ Davis Cup and scoring international victories in women’s hockey and netball.
With public awareness growing that the Games are just short months away, Sydney organizers will be hoping euphoria at hosting the world’s largest sporting event will replace the sour taste left after 1999.. Throughout the year it hosted international events including rugby, a National Football League preseason game between Denver and San Diego and soccer matches.
Also at Homebush, Thorpe was the hometown hero of the Pan Pacific swimming championships in August in the pool which will be used for the Olympics.

But the IOC and the local committee quickly announced that Nike would take Reebok’s place.
Even as the scandals rattled through SOCOG’s inner-city headquarters, the main Olympic site at Homebush Bay took on the buzz of excitement as the first major sporting events were held to test facilities and transport.
The main Olympic Stadium Australia was opened in March and coped comfortably with crowds of more than 100,000 people. Worse still, a pool of 840,000 of the best Games tickets had been set aside for high rollers prepared to pay premium prices.
The public was outraged. Critics included the public face of the SOCOG’s ticketing campaign, cricket hero Mark Taylor, champion swimmer Ian Thorpe and Prime Minister John Howard.
SOCOG finished the year in damage control, firing ticketing chief Paul Reading – who described himself as SOCOG’s “ugly face of capitalism” – and releasing 525,000 more tickets to the public.
Furthering SOCOG’s woes have been continuing problems meeting the 2.7 million Australian dollars (1.75 million US dlrs) budget.
In December, SOCOG again revised the amount of forecast sponsorship revenue, this time by up to 100 million Australian dollars (65 million US dlrs) and appointed a management team to find areas to slash spending to make up the difference.
Also in December, Reebok pulled out as a main sponsor of the Sydney Games and initiated legal proceedings against SOCOG over clothing rights. an extra 1 million Australian dollars (650,000 US dlrs).
Worse for SOCOG in the public eye was a debacle late in the year over ticketing.
After SOCOG promised 3.5 million tickets would be available through a ballot system, Australians lodged a record more than 320,000 applications, paying SOCOG around 180 million Australian dollars (115 million US dlrs) in advance for the chance to see the events they nominated.
But in December it was revealed SOCOG advertising campaigns and promotional material had been misleading and only 3 million tickets had been offered to the general public. The move was apparently triggered by a talkback radio campaign which demanded the band members be Australian.
But Knight was forced into an embarrassing backdown when band organizers took SOCOG to court for breach of contract, and agreed to pay American company World Projects Corp. In May he announced organizers had cut the expected revenue from the Games by 71 million Australian dollars (about 46 million US dlrs), including almost 50 million Australian dollars (32.5 million US dlrs) in sponsorship.
Knight could not blame the IOC for a fiasco over student marching bands at the Games’ opening ceremony.
In June, Knight canceled a contract that would have supplied a 2,000-strong marching band made up mostly of American and Japanese students.