Leigh Halfpenny is to make his long-awaited Super Rugby debut for Crusaders against Queensland Reds on Saturday.

The 35-year-old feared his first season in New Zealand could be wiped out after tearing a pectoral muscle in a pre-season friendly at Munster in February.

But the former Wales full-back has recovered faster than expected in time to start against Reds in Christchurch.

Halfpenny, wearing a Gorseinon RFC jersey alongside Crusaders teammates in their provincial colours, posted on social media:, external "Excited to excited to get out there with the boys tomorrow."

Halfpenny, Wales' third highest points-scorer, signed a one-year deal with Crusaders after announcing his retirement from international rugby.

His return will help boost the defending champions' dwindling hopes of reaching the play-offs, following just two wins from nine games, and sees former Scarlets teammate Johnny McNichol switch to wing.

Italy scrum-half Stephen Varney hopes he can be a "good asset" for Gloucester on Saturday when they face Benetton in their European Challenge Cup semi-final.

Varney, 22, has been capped 29 times by the Azzurri since making his international debut in 2020 and will face many of his Azzurri team-mates at Kingsholm.

The winner will face either South African side Sharks or French outfit Clermont in the final in London on Friday, 24 May.

"Training with them for a lot of time in the year, I know how they play, I know individually their skillsets as well so I think that will be a good asset on the weekend," Varney told BBC Points West.

"Theyre a physical pack, theyre very well-drilled and their attack is very good as well. Theyve got good backs, good threats individually and they play similar to Italy."

Benetton supplied 20 players to Italy's Six Nations squad this year - they enjoyed their best-ever campaign in the tournament - including captain Michele Lamaro, while their head coach Marco Bortolami is a former Cherry and Whites captain.

Gloucester have beaten Benetton the last three times they have met in the Challenge Cup, with a 54-25 win in the group stages in December 2021 the most recent meeting.

"I think theyre a different team now," said Wales-born Varney, who qualifies for Italy through his mother.

"Theyll probably get stuck into me I imagine because I gave them some chat in camp. [I'm] really looking forward to going up against them, it should be a cracker."

On the eve of the Bannister Miles event, one of Sir Roger Bannisters children proudly talks about the great mans legacy

With the Bannister Miles event set to unfold on Monday, what would Sir Roger Bannister himself think of the modern athletics scene with its advances in technology together with the fact British men Josh Kerr and Jake Wightman have won the last two world 1500m titles?

There are surely few people better to ask than Thurstan Bannister one of Sir Rogers four children and part of the organising team for the Bannister Miles meeting.

I think my father would be very pleased as he was always keenly followed British athletes, says Thurstan on the recent successes of British athletes on the global scene. He had wonderful dialogues with Seb Coe, Steve Ovett and Steve Cram and those were dialogues that were continued as far as possible for many years.

Sir Roger died in 2018 but his feat of becoming the first man to run a sub-four-minute mile is very much alive and celebrates its 70^th anniversary on May 6.

Thurstan adds: I think he realised the training demands had changed and it required much more time and dedication than in his era, but he embraced peoples choices about what they would do and their striving for excellence in the paths they chose.

The Bannister Miles event kicks off with a series of community miles at 9am followed by track races at Iffley Road in Oxford in the afternoon culminating with elite mile races at 6pm. There is also a mile fair with a pop-up museum and World Athletics Heritage presentations in the afternoon.

Lots of people from Oxford University and its cross-country and athletics club members through to the British Milers Club and World Athletics have put considerable effort into creating a great celebration on Monday. Among other things a number of supermilers are aiming to be in attendance, including Filbert Bayi, Noureddine Morceli, British record-holder Steve Cram, indoor mile legend Eamonn Coghlan and current world record-holder Hicham El Guerrouj.

Seb Coe is unable to attend due to a clash with the World Relays in the Bahamas but the World Athletics president a huge supporter of Bannisters achievement and legacy is expected to deliver a video message at the event.

I think its a tremendous opportunity, Thurstan continues about Mondays event. Its not just looking back, its enjoying the present and looking to the future. My father has this great legacy of supporting and being fascinated by elite running but also being a huge advocate of a sport for everyone as a source of enjoyment, as a source of friendship.

He continues: Its becoming a really unique event. And I want it to be an anchor event in the future, because it combines a really tremendous large-scale track meet, focused on the mile along with this community mile.

Indeed, Thurstan says the element of the day hes most looking forward to are the childrens waves in the community mile. One of the things that has really come out as weve presented this new possibility is that its an entry point for people trying out running and jogging, he explains.

A lot of the road events in the country at the moment are 5km, 10km, half- marathons, marathons. Well, this is just a mile. Anyone can try out a mile and it with the excitement of it, the enjoyment of it that may start something new in their life.

Whereas Sir Roger made a huge impact in the medical world and also in sports politics, Thurstan went into the world of finance and took up cycling. He does, however, have fond memories of running with his father as a child.

We were aware of it (the sub-four-minute mile) because he was often away doing things and hed be greeted by people in the street, he remembers. We obviously had trophies and memorabilia. And we were running with him quite a lot in places like Richmond Park and Wimbledon Common.

It is five years since Sir Roger died and his son is clearly full of pride over not just his fathers achievements but his all-round personality.

I think the most important thing to say is Im so grateful for having such a marvellous father, such a visionary, so idealistic. What a model in terms of hard work and hard work devoted to good causes of medicine and to health, in general, through the sports council and other bodies he worked for.

He put no pressure on us (his children) to excel in sport. He thought it was something you neednt do in a very serious way while youre at primary or secondary school. But he was delighted to applaud results we had if we did choose to do something like that.

READ MORE: Sub-four fever as ultimate milestone approaches

One of the things that is highly characteristic of him is he was just so interested in other people and their stories and how they got to where they were.

As I go around Oxford, I find he has met so many people in different circumstances and everyone smiles and recollects their conversations with him. They talk about his enthusiasm, curiosity and optimism.

LIVERPOOL, England -- Sylvester Stallone is an Everton supporter and perhaps the most apt celebrity fan of any Premier League team. After all, the Hollywood actor built a career on rolling with the punches and hauling himself off the canvas as Rocky Balboa. His story has become the story of Everton, a club that doesn't know where the next punch is coming from.

For this season at least, Everton have been able to fight back and ready themselves for whatever new setback or challenge came their way. Having been hit with two separate points deductions by the Premier League for breaching financial regulations -- a 10-point penalty was reduced to six on appeal, while the club is challenging an additional two-point deduction -- Sean Dyche's team has rallied in recent weeks to pull clear of the relegation zone and seemingly secure their top-flight status.

But while the construction of a new 750m, 52,888-capacity stadium on the banks of the River Mersey points to a bright new future for Everton, the months ahead continue to be laced with peril for one of England's most historic clubs.

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The worst-case scenario is that Everton will be hit with further points deductions next season and potentially enter administration -- a rescue mechanism for insolvent companies -- if a proposed takeover by 777 Partners, a Miami-based private investment company which owns football teams around the world, fails to get over the line.

Everton face Luton Town at Kenilworth Road on Friday having ensured their Premier League survival with three wins in the space of six days last week, including a first home win against city rivals Liverpool since 2010, but they continue to fight for their future.

It is a complex story, one which has roots in both the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In many ways, football has been the least of Everton's worries during a chaotic period of uncertainty. "Since I've been here, it's been like juggling sand," said Dyche, appointed as manager in January 2023. "There's always something going on here, it's been constant. It's like putting your fingers in the dam."

Or as Rocky Balboa said: "It ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward."

That has become the Everton way. But the fight isn't over.

Feb. 24, 2022, was when everything changed for Everton. Russia's invasion of Ukraine sparked a conflict that continues to this day -- a conflict that has brought horror to the Ukrainian people and one that has impacted life across Europe and beyond. Global energy prices soared, European and African nations dependent on Ukrainian grain have been hit by shortages of the product and over 6 million refugees from the war have fled to countries across Europe. Few can claim to have been unaffected by the war.

A football club in the wealthiest league in the world would seem an unlikely entity to suffer a direct consequence of a war being fought more than 2,000 miles away, but Everton's future has been in jeopardy ever since.

The club's owner since February 2016 is Farhad Moshiri, a British-Iranian businessperson and chartered accountant. Between 2013 and 2022, he served as chairman of USM Holdings, whose majority shareholder is Uzbek-Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov. Long-standing business partners, Moshiri and Usmanov were co-owners of Red and White Holdings, which sold a 29.72% stake in Arsenal to Stan Kroenke for 550m in 2018.

Moshiri and Usmanov continued to work closely at Everton, with USM paying 20m-a-year for naming rights of the club's Finch Farm training ground and sponsorship of the women's team. USM also paid 30m for the option to secure naming rights of the new stadium.

With the club having devised a funding plan for the stadium in 2018 based on capital from Moshiri and borrowing from investment banks including JP Morgan and MUFG, the landscape changed with the financial fallout of the global pandemic. Previously affordable interest rates on the borrowing rocketed -- "The financial landscape for developers changed, and the club couldn't afford the new rates on offer," a source told ESPN -- so Plan B was a 200 million, 20-year deal with USM for stadium naming rights, the majority of those funds being paid in advance to cover the required shortfall.

But in the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the UK government issued sanctions against several Russian businesspeople, freezing their assets, applying a travel ban and prohibiting British businesses from dealing with them. Usmanov was sanctioned on March 3, 2022 -- Chelsea's then-owner Roman Abramovich would be sanctioned seven days later -- and Everton were suddenly staring at a financial meltdown with the USM deals having to be abandoned. The prospect of building the stadium with favourable rates from Usmanov's steel company also evaporated.

"The club was left with two options," a source told ESPN. "Walk away from the stadium project, leave it half-built and stay at Goodison Park, or try to find a way to build it by borrowing money from different sources. For the future of the club, it had to be the latter."

While Manchester City and West Ham United moved into stadiums built with taxpayers' money for the 2002 Commonwealth Games and 2012 Olympics respectively, paying only a peppercorn rent -- essentially a nominal fee for the privilege, with West Ham paying 3.6m in 2023 and City charged 2m per year on a 250-year lease with the Manchester City Council -- Everton are having to pay to build their new home, and they have found themselves being engulfed by a perfect storm of COVID-19, the invasion of Ukraine and the panic to fund the construction of the stadium.

To add to Everton's predicament, there is no prospect of raising significant funds with the sale of Goodison Park due to its location. Instead, Everton are committed to transforming the site into a hub for the local community.

The club had amassed losses of 371.8m, which included short-term borrowing to cover stadium costs, during a three-year period -- Premier League profit & sustainability rules (PSR) allowed for a maximum loss of 105m over three years -- with the impact of the pandemic being blamed for up to 220m of that figure. "Losses of at least 170m are attributed to the impact on the club of the Covid-19 pandemic, with 103m of that figure coming in the 2020-21 financial year," then-Everton CEO Denise Barrett-Baxendale said. "The wide-ranging impact of COVID-19 on Everton -- which further market analysis has indicated could include an additional 50m -- covers lost revenues, additional costs due to strict COVID-19 protocols and a significant contraction in the transfer market which resulted in the inability to generate the level of transfer fees which could reasonably have been expected pre-pandemic."

Those financial numbers, combined with interest costs of 25m related to the new stadium, saw Everton breach the PSR regulations, even allowing for so-called "add-backs" in relation to the pandemic, and the Premier League's first sanction was to deduct the club 10 points last November for losses totalling 124.5m for the three-year period up to the end of the 2021-22 season. That penalty was reduced on appeal to six points in February. In April, the Premier League docked Everton two points for losses totalling 121.6m for the three-year period up to the end of the 2022-23 season. Everton has appealed against the deduction.

"We've been through it once, and we'll go through it again," Dyche said at the time. "The time for fault and blame has gone. We're past that."

Yet Everton are not past it. Loans totalling 158m from two local businesspeople and MSP Sports Capital must be repaid before the Premier League will give the green light to the planned takeover by 777 Partners. After a loan of 15m this week to cover Everton's wage bill and stadium costs for May, 777 Partners have now lent the club in excess of 200m since agreeing to buy the club last September.

On April 22, Bloomberg reported that Everton's main financial adviser, Deloitte LLP, was actively seeking new backers amid concerns that the 777 deal could collapse. Meanwhile, the stadium continues to take shape with Everton anticipating a full handover by December. The entrance to the site is directly opposite the Titanic Hotel, named after the ill-fated ship that was registered just along the river before it sank on its maiden voyage in 1912.

Everton will hope that is an unfortunate coincidence rather than a bad omen.

Look up the definition of "no-nonsense" in a dictionary and you might just find a picture of Sean Dyche. The Everton manager is blunt, some would say that he's old-school, but he isn't in the business of excuses or self-pity. He focuses on what can be done rather than worrying about what can't, and since succeeding Frank Lampard as manager in January 2023, he has safely steered Everton away from relegation in successive seasons.

Dyche's personality has made him the perfect figurehead to deal with Everton's off-field problems, despite the obvious frustration with having to focus on the same old story. "Since I've been here, I think I've done 54 press conferences, and I've done 53 that haven't been about football, including today," Dyche said when asked by ESPN whether the off-field issues have been a distraction. "That's the reality of this football club, this segment of its history.

"I wasn't expecting it to be as big a challenge as it's been, quite obviously. When you get a job and [club directors] speak to you about the job, they don't say, "Oh yeah, by the way, this is coming, that's coming, this is coming now and you're going to spend 50-odd press conferences talking about other things other than football. But no, that's my job. It has certainly become my job this last two seasons. The clouds have been around this club for a long time now, but the job comes in many forms, so what are you going to do?"

Dyche has fostered a spirit of siege mentality at the club, and after the initial 10-point deduction in November, the team won four successive league games to restore the belief that it could avoid relegation.

"After the first deduction, we all felt 'we're up against the wall here, how we going to get out of it?'" goalkeeper Jordan Pickford told ESPN. "But we got four wins on the bounce, so the mentality as a squad has been brilliant. You get the hits, you get the knocks, but you keep fighting.

"You keep waiting, wondering how many points you're going to get back, and it just feeds into the camp. You don't want it to, but it just naturally does -- people start talking about it, and you probably think about it too much, forgetting other things on the pitch. But we got four points back, reset ourselves, everything was going along nicely ... and then we get more taken off us."

Aside from Everton's two deductions this season, Nottingham Forest have also been hit with a four-point deduction by the Premier League for breaching financial regulations. Yet while the relegation battle has been impacted by those disciplinary penalties, the spectre of Manchester City's 115 charges for alleged financial breaches continues to hover in the background. City were charged in February 2023, over a month before Everton were first charged by the Premier League, but a veil of silence has since fallen over the process: last week, Premier League chief executive Richard Masters refused to confirm when the hearing will take place, saying only that it would be in the "near future."

The repeated action against Everton, with City's fate continuing to be delayed, has prompted Dyche to question the process. "Just like everyone else, we are all wondering what makes one rule for one and one rule for the other," Dyche said in February. "I don't know the ins and outs for every reason, but I think we are all asking that. The people in the street are asking: 'Why is it particularly Everton?'

"I don't know what the exact number is, but they reference over 100 charges [for City]. I don't know the implications of that either. I don't know the details of the charges, but you go, 'Well, we have one.' You just go with common sense -- I'm not talking about the rules. I'm [also] not questioning Man City or whether they've done stuff or not done stuff. The point is it is certainly a long time. That story has been going round for a while now about all these charges."

While nobody at Everton will be bold enough to say that they are through the worst with the Premier League, there is a sense that they have fought the hardest fight this season and emerged intact. Yet there's no doubt that question marks over their treatment will linger for a long time yet.

"Sometimes you think it's not our fault, it's not the fans' fault, whose fault is it?" Pickford said. "We don't know, but it's about how do we just keep going and keep giving the fans some enjoyment, some smiles on their faces, because they've had a tough ride over the last couple of years."

Everton fans have certainly had it tough. Neighbours Liverpool have won the Premier League and Champions League in recent years, while Everton have lurched from relegation battles to financial problems. Since Jurgen Klopp was appointed Liverpool manager in October 2015, Everton have had eight full-time managers and little or nothing to shout about. It meant that last month's 2-0 win against their neighbours at Goodison was a big deal -- it was their first derby win on home soil since 2010.

Toni runs the Goodison Café on Goodison Road, directly opposite the stadium, with its walls decorated with old magazine pages of great Everton teams from the past and the club's most memorable players. "The Liverpool game was amazing," Toni told ESPN. "The atmosphere before and after the game was buzzing."

One of Toni's customers, Paul, visits the café because he can no longer afford to pay to watch the team, but his passion for the club is clear. And while he is pragmatic about Everton breaking over a century of tradition by leaving Goodison Park, Paul is less accepting of the Premier League's treatment of the club with the two point deductions. "It feels like we have been victimised," he said. "Look, we broke the rules and admitted what we had done, so we deserved a deduction, but not to that extent.

"Everton is a big club, but we're not big enough to fight it. We don't have all the expensive lawyers that Man City have, so let's see what happens to them."

City's fate is one for the future, near or far, depending on the actual date that is set for the hearing. Meanwhile, Everton's future promises to be bright: new stadium, potential new owners and the Premier League punishment disappearing in the rearview mirror. But they're not there just yet. Everton are still bracing themselves for the next blow, wherever it might come from.

"Whatever happens, whatever mud gets thrown us, whatever the problems, whatever the angles, whatever the criticisms, we'll take it on," Dyche said. "We'll make sense of it and keep going forwards."

TORONTO -- Boston Bruins coach Jim Montgomery called out star forward David Pastrnak after a 2-1 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday night sent this first-round series to a Game 7.

Montgomery was asked if the Bruins needed more from their top skaters to avoid elimination come Saturday in Boston, and he identified Pastrnak in particular as needing to provide more to the group.

"Your best players need to be your best players this time of year," Montgomery said. "I think the effort is tremendous. They need to come through with some big-time plays in big-time moments. [Brad] Marchand has done this throughout the series. [Pastrnak] needs to step up."

Pastrnak has two goals and four points this postseason for a Boston team that once held a 3-1 lead in the series.

Boston got off to another sluggish start in Game 6 and was outshot 12-1 in a scoreless first period. The Bruins had opportunities in the second period to take a lead, but it was Maple Leafs winger William Nylander who broke the stalemate late in the frame to give Toronto an advantage it never relinquished.

Nylander scored again in the third period for a 2-0 lead. Boston's Morgan Geekie scored with 0.1 seconds left in the third period to rob Toronto goaltender Joseph Woll of the shutout.

"[Toronto] had a couple looks in the first period and their goalie made a couple saves," Pastrnak said. "We got much better as the game went on. But we have to be much better at the start."

Boston eventually found a rhythm later in the game, but the Maple Leafs didn't allow much space or open ice for the Bruins to work with. Toronto was playing without star forward Auston Matthews for the second consecutive outing and while that appeared to galvanize Toronto's bench, the Bruins failed to match their opponents' next-man-up mentality.

"It's a tight game, and they were prepared to play from the first shift," Marchand said. "We need to be better in that area. The last couple games they've started really hard and carried the momentum in the first period and we have to do a better job there."

The Bruins also were undone by their poor start in Tuesday's Game 5 (a 2-1 overtime loss), and while Montgomery was adamant ahead of Game 6 that that wouldn't be the case, his team did not rise to the occasion as he had hoped.

''It's unacceptable, our start again," Montgomery said. ''We have to find a way to start on time. Toronto, they're starting on time. They're getting the advantage, they're getting the momentum. But it shouldn't take that long [for us]."

It's eerily familiar territory for the Bruins, who are on the cusp of history they'd rather not see repeated.

The Bruins ran away with the Presidents' Trophy last season but blew a 3-1 series lead over eighth-seeded Florida in the first round. Now Boston is grappling with similar demons against Toronto.

"We're not living in the past," Montgomery said. "We're not living the future. We're living in the present. We're not happy with our game. We'll get ready for Game 7 starting tomorrow."