In Brief
Athens wins one more rugby title The Athens rugby club won the national championship for the fourth year in a row, defeating the Attica Springboks 22-18 in the final at Glyka Nera, eastern Attica last Saturday. Athens has won all four league titles and continued its dominance of the domestic game in one of the most memorable and exciting matches ever staged in Greece, in front of hundreds of rugby fans. Favorites enter playoffs with victories The top four of the volleyball league enjoyed home wins in the first matches of the league’s quarterfinals series on Sunday. Panathinaikos downed PAOK 3-0, Olympiakos defeated Lamia by the same score, Iraklis dropped the first set but overcame Aris 3-1 and EA Patras dismissed visiting Finikas Syrou 3-1. The second matches of the best-of three series are scheduled for next week. Doping in soccer OFI’s central defender Manolis Moniakis has failed a doping test and was forced to leave the Greece Under-21 camp last Friday. If Moniakis’s second sample also tests positive he could face a ban of up to two years. Greece U21 defeated the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia U21 3-1 on Saturday. Lena loses Greek tennis player Lena Daniilidou and her German partner Jasmin Woehr were runners-up in the doubles of the La Palma tournament in Spain on Sunday. They went down to China’s Jing-Jing Lu and Sheng-Nan Sun, despite winning the second set in the final. Protasov at Iraklis Former Soviet Union international player Oleg Protasov has reached a preliminary deal with Iraklis to coach the Thessaloniki soccer side from this summer, according to reports. He has previously managed Olympiakos, AEL Limassol and Steaua Bucharest.
