Divine Intervention. The reason Bidvest will win the fight for Adcock (and Sunderland AFC beat relegation)

Divine intervention. That's what big spending Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich's Chelsea FC was up against when it lost last night to the Premiership's current bottom team Sunderland. A club whose shirt sponsor is South Africa's own Bidvest, the company involved in a battle of its own with Chilean-based CFR.  That's Pope Francis himself holding up the Bidvest-sponsored club's shirt. And no, it's not photoshopped. The photo-opp of a lifetime happened when Sunderland AFC's resident chaplain Father Marc Lyden-Smith made a pilgrimage to the Vatican. The club gave him a strip with the name "Papa Francesco" on it (below) and the Wearside priest got close enough to the Pope to hand it over. Father Marc reportedly asked his boss to pray for the club "and he said he would. There were 120,000 people there so I was very lucky to get that chance." A betting man might take it as a sign and grab the better than even money from bookies provided the club avoids relegation. For its part, Bidvest should circulate the pic in Chile where 63% of the population is Catholic. Once the Pope's support for the opposition is shown, it would be a brave shareholder who continues supporting the CFR challenge. – AH