Vital weekend for Grove

Grove Menzieshill can reel in Edinburgh University and Clydesdale Western, with an anticipated win over Hillhead at Disc sufficient to leapfrog their closest rivals as they sit out today’s premier division card,

writes our women’s hockey correspondent.

The trickier task will be tomorrow, at Wildcats.

MJV Wanderers visit Erskine Stewart’s Melville today and host Hillhead tomorrow.

Kinross host Waverley Inveresk Trinity in a ‘must win’ clash in Championship A.

Grove’s A squad visit table-toppers MCCW II.

Madras v Wanderers II just edges the Midland top of the bill, with Blairgowrie v Perthshire II a close second.

Meanwhile, Brechin Thistles face Monarchs.

The big game in Division 2 is the meeting between Grove III and Kinross II.

Dollar and Morrison’s academies fly the Midland flag in the SE Cup and Plate Finals at Glasgow Green, facing Mary Erskine’s and George Watson’s College respectively.

Maria Sharapova accepts she will have a cloud of suspicion hanging over her when she returns to tennis next month.

The five-time Grand Slam champion is serving a 15-month doping ban after testing positive for cardiac drug meldonium at the Australian Open in 2016.

Sharapova’s suspension runs out on April 26. She plays her first match the same day, having been given a wild card into the Porsche Grand Prix in Stuttgart.

Players’ reaction to her impending return has been largely lukewarm.

The awarding of a wild card for a tournament that begins while she is still banned has been controversial, with Caroline Wozniacki branding it as “disrespectful”.

The French Open and Wimbledon are under pressure over whether to award entry to their former champion.

Sharapova admitted at a press conference last March that she took meldonium, insisting her only mistake was not