A DEVASTATING right hook from challenger Ryan Barrett provided a stunning finale to the English super featherweight title showdown in Jersey on Saturday evening.

That is how the JEP began its account of Barrett’s win over Femi Fehintola at the Hotel de France last weekend. Afterwards, the ‘pale skinned Londoner’ Barrett explained that he’d studied Femi’s style of boxing and knew that he was vulnerable to the right hook, which he delivered, quite clinically, in the second minute of the third round.

In front of an audience of over 600, Barrett had upset the form book and is now destined for potential future glory. However, after the contest, Barrett paid tribute not only to Fehintola, but also to the Island, saying that he’d been made so welcome that he wants to holiday here and that if there’s a chance to fight here again at some future date he wouldn’t say no.

As the last time the Island hosted a professional boxing match was over 20 years ago, he might have to wait a bit, although Dennis Hobson, who organized the event via his Fight Academy, believes that the Island deserves more bouts like this.

Even though his own fighter – Bradford’s Fehintola – was beaten, he said afterwards: ‘I recognized, from the buzz in the ring, before the fight, that this was something special. The Jersey public know their boxing and, even before the bout, it showed.

‘I’d like to bring another title fight to the Island, possibly Clinton Woods to fight Elvira Mariqui in an elimination fight for a shot at the light-heavyweight world title,’ he told me. ‘Of course I’m not happy that my boy (Fehintola) lost to Barrett, but Jersey has proved itself capable of putting on a show as good as this.

‘All I need is the support from a few local companies to bring the fight to the Island. We’ll get TV coverage, I’ve no doubt of that. If it does go ahead, the fight will probably be in February or March, although you never know what state the world’s in, come the current credit crunch. But as a resident in Jersey for the last five or six years, I want to put something back into the Island. A Clinton fight would do just that. If there are any companies out there who’d be interested in sponsoring us, I’d like to hear from them.’

When I spoke to Dennis he was unhappy that his man had lost the fight, but was also upbeat because of the support he’d been given by the Island public; support which also raised between £10,000 and £15,000 for the NSPCC and CLIC Sargent (Jersey), and he sees no reason why yet another professional fight can’t come to Jersey.

‘A world title eliminator fight is very much on the cards. I can put a TV deal together. I’m prepared to put in a few quid myself,’ he said, ‘But I can’t do it alone. I do need the backing of a few local firms if we’re to bring another professional fight back to the Island,’ he said.

Jersey has enjoyed a rich tradition in boxing down the decades and used to regularly pack them in at the old Springfield stadium with both amateur and professional bouts. For those who pour scorn on boxing as a ‘thuggish’ sport, it has never been so carefully monitored, as it is nowadays, and is at the bottom end of the scale in terms of dangerous activities – you are more likely to be injured taking up potholing, or rugby, for example, than you are by stepping into a boxing ring. So I wholeheartedly endorse Dennis’s hopes of bringing a professional fight, possibly one featuring Clinton Woods, back to the Island.

Show me the money

At the moment money (or the lack of it!) is at the forefront of most Islanders’ thoughts. For we have what is loosely called ‘a credit crunch’ and the effects of that will live with us, and affect us, for some time to come.

However, whatever the effects of the impending recession, I have recently been intrigued by how money and sport have merged together in such a way that the days of amateurism, in all sports, with the possible exception of croquet and curling, have come and gone.
Rugby – a sport begun when a schoolboy picked up a football and decided to run with it – is a case in point.

Did you know, for example, that during their last Lions’ tour of New Zealand, 80,000 Lions’ shirts were sold? – more shirts than Liverpool, Arsenal or the mighty Man Utd sold that year?

Meanwhile sponsors no longer confine themselves to adverts during the breakdown in play. Instead, they have their name engraved on the pitch. So, during last year’s Six Nations championship, the main sponsors came away having had five hours, three minutes and 20 seconds ‘of prime TV exposure’, courtesy of the cameras which can’t fail to publicise the company which buys the grass if their name is emblazoned in 20ft high letters, at one end of the pitch.

And, for added information, the Six Nations were sponsored by 285 companies including O2, who weren’t even the major sponsors, but who paid $6m for their names to be shown on the English shirts.
Sport costs money; and as we know from the tens of thousands that Jersey has to stump up to support its local rugby team, the higher you go in terms of team sport, the more you have to pay. And yet it was only a generation ago that amateurs played rugby for nothing – unless, of course, you were so gifted that when you returned to your changing room, there were a few £5 notes tucked into your socks . . .

Fighting against illness

Briefly, onto more serious matters. Seve Ballesteros won five major golfing tournaments, including the Masters, twice. Recently he has undergone a third operation for a brain tumour, an operation which has been called, by his surgeons, ‘a success’.

Seve was always a compelling golfer, and I can remember how once the Spaniard hit a golf ball out of a tree, 10 ft up, for it to land on the green. He played some amazingly bad shots but also he played some shots which were, to us mere mortals, out of this world.

Meanwhile, in the newspapers this week, I also read about how Zimbabwe’s Tony Johnstone credited his win in this year’s Jersey Seniors Classic as a triumph of sport over illness.

For Tony was told four years ago that he would never play golf again. But he did. And the 52-year-old not only beat the course, and his fellow competitors. He also beat Multiple Scelrosis and, according to the national press, he is continuing to beat the illness. As a reminder, this is what he said after he’d won the tournament at La Moye: ‘In terms of personal satisfaction, no other win means as much to me. Four years ago I didn’t even think I would play golf again.

‘I’ve had so much support from family and friends. Ecstatic doesn’t even come close to describing my feelings. I was holding back the tears on the final putt. There are so many MS sufferers out there. Hopefully this win will show them not to give up hope. There are a lot of people when they first find out go into a tailspin and press the panic button but I was lucky to get a clinical trial.

‘There is a lot being done in research and hopefully this will show people not to give up hope. That’s one of my goals really, to show MS sufferers it’s not the end of the road. ‘There were a number of times on the European Tour where you’d three-putt on the last green on a Friday afternoon and miss the cut and you’d come off and think “why do I do this for a living?”. It’s only when they tell you that you’ll never do it again that you realise how much you love it.’

Pooling resources

According to a recent survey the longer you play sport, the longer you’ll live. But then the government doesn’t pay you to go to the gym or to swim or to stay fit although, if you think about it, perhaps it should do.
For, in the long run, the fitter you are, the less you’ll worry the taxpayer. And if I was elected to serve in the States? My first initiative would be to provide free swimming in any Island pool for those under ten or over 55. I’d also re-open the pool at Fort Regent – and hang the expense.