Archives for March 2009

Remember that blog I wrote a couple of months back about visiting Huddersfield Town? Well, the January snow might have delayed us, but Dirs and Fordyce don't give up that easily - and here's that video I promised!

Huddersfield was the first stop on our Marvellous, Magical, Mad Football League Tour, with Tom and me planning to visit more clubs from outside the hackneyed old Premier League in future.

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Fine, so it was all a bit before the Lord Mayor's Show at Twickenham on Saturday, but Lions head coach Ian McGeechan will still have been watching intently, rubbing out names from his team-sheet, going over others with indelible ink.

Whether the thumping victory over France last Sunday allied with the Calcutta Cup win over Scotland will be enough to greatly increase England's quota of players to tour South Africa this summer remains to be seen.

But talk of the Welsh & Irish Lions - especially since, if Wales head coach Warren Gatland is to be believed, they don't get along too well - has surely been consigned to history.

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The boos following Amir Khan's defeat of Marco Antonio Barrera suggest the Bolton lightweight still has some way to go to placate his more trenchant critics - and that the British disease of wanting to see their own fail has yet to be eradicated.

Put simply, Khan did what he had to do at the MEN Arena in Manchester, although the manner of victory wasn't entirely satisfactory. However, promoter Frank Warren, having seen three of his fighters suffer potentially career-ending defeats on the undercard, would surely disagree.

The cut sustained by Mexican legend Barrera in the opening round certainly spoilt the fight as a spectacle, but Khan still did enough to show that his partnership with venerable American trainer Freddie Roach, only two fights old, is having the desired effect.

Khan was too fast, too strong and ultimately too young for his 35-year-old opponent, although it shouldn't be forgotten that Barrera was effectively one-eyed for most of the fight. Crucially, Roach is also succeeding in moulding a more patient, cerebral fighter.

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Frank Warren's sickness following a recent visit to The Fat Duck restaurant in Bray will be as nothing next to the feeling he'll have in the pit of his stomach if Amir Khan comes unstuck against Marco Antonio Barrera on Saturday.

For while Warren and hundreds of other diners were laid low by an as yet unknown assailant lurking within Heston Blumenthal's kitchen, Khan's promoter will only have himself to blame if Barrera does a number on his boy in Manchester: Barrera's ability to induce guts ache is hardly a mystery.

Make no mistake, pitting the 22-year-old Bolton lightweight against Mexican legend Barrera is a significant punt on the part of Warren, usually so cautious, in match-making if not culinary terms.

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While news conferences at Lord's and Twickenham usually have all the razzmatazz of a Requiem Mass, you can be sure that when there's a big fight that needs promoting, the nation's boxing writers will get a little more than a ream of platitudes to go with their custard creams.

So at London's Imperial War Museum, we were treated to a history lesson on the Second World War from promoter Bob Arum and some rhymes from Ricky Hatton's trainer Floyd Mayweather Sr.

Oh, and the startling revelation from Manny Pacquiao's trainer Freddie Roach that his charge ran away from home as a boy after discovering his father had eaten his dog. Something tells me the Pacman's going to trump Hatton in the salt-of-the-earth stakes.

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