Welsh boxer Nathan Howells on his story to his pro debut, why he chose boxing and his aspirations/plans for the future.

Nathan Howells burst onto the pro boxing scene with his victory over Mexico’s Christian Lopez Flores in Cardiff on Friday.

The Cardiff Vale Arena was packed with supporters eager to watch his long awaited debut and they weren’t disappointed as Nathan took a well deserved 40-37 points decision.

So who is Nathan Howells and how did he get started?

Nathan Howells is a 27 year old boxer from Newport Wales, he boxed from the age of 14 and had 9 amateur fights under his belt before deciding to turn pro.

“If I’m brutally honest at first I didn’t like boxing.”

“I used to say to my friends why’d you want to let someone punch you in the face, but then I tried it and I loved it.”

There was never any doubt Howells had the talent, but had been in and out of boxing for many years.

He added: “My last amateur fight I was 60kg and after my time off I came back around 13 stone, I didn’t think I was ever going to box again.”

Howells planned on starting his career two years prior to his debut but covid stopped him in his tracks.

“Before covid struck I wanted to enter the welsh just for my own confidence more than anything but things didn’t go that way.”

“I sparred boys in the gym every day like Joshua John who also boxed Friday night, he has 100 odd amateur fights himself so I got as good experience from sparring as I would’ve entering the welsh.”

He made his debut against Christian Lopez Flores of Mexico who has 12 wins 10 by way of knockouts, so this was not your average debut.

“I felt like it was a tough fight for my first fight, I felt a little tense and eager to get into a fight with him and didn’t move my head enough.”

Howells has been invited to compete at one show in November and one in December before the end of the year.

“I don’t want to enter too many fights in quick succession so I have the same atmosphere as I did Friday at every fight.”

“I will speak to my manager and see what he thinks is best for me and if he believes I should do both I will.”

“I’m always confident in my ability and will go as far as I can go, if that takes me to British level it takes me to British level, if it takes me further so be it.”

“I’ll always go as long as I can go to the best of my ability.”

Nathan Howells is undoubtably one to look out for in the welsh pro boxing scene and is planning on extending his record to 3-0 before Christmas, this will put him in a good position to go on and compete for the welsh professional title in future.

Part two of my Interview with Daniel Tanhai: Volunteer at Football club.

Daniel expressed his thoughts on the situation many grassroots clubs like his own are in, needing all the help they can get from the FAW and his happiness on female/black&ethnic minority groups participation in his sessions.

Many football clubs whether it be grassroots to conference and all the way to the top of the Premier League have taken a hit financially over the last 12 months.

Daniel Tanhai and his club Canton Liberals Football in particular have gone above and beyond for his players and the football community.

“It’s not about comparison but I don’t see many clubs doing much more better than we’ve done.”

“Were proud we’ve made ourselves an inclusive football club.”

Despite his efforts, financially a lot of grassroots football clubs cannot afford to continue to go on this way. With the Welsh National team making it to the euros more funding will trickle its way down the footballing pyramid to clubs most in need of it.

Grassroots clubs need volunteers more than ever and Daniel is optimistic the FAW will pick his club as one of the ones eligible to do so.

“The biggest thing is the FAW running an initiative now, the problem is we need more bums on seats to help.”

“We need to put people on their toes by saying listen, I think if you don’t want to help us we aren’t sure how we can continue in this way.”

We’re really hoping the FAW choose us to be involved in that scheme because it’s so important for us.”

Black and minority and female participation is also a topic we covered and is something Daniel was proud of in his club.

“We have such an excellent black and minority ethnic group presence in our boys section.”

“Our women’s participation is also brilliant.”

“We don’t turn anyone away, we’re here for everyone of all ages, colour or disabilities because that’s what we want to be here for.”

Daniel Hantai and his club’s next ambitions will be to achieve that level of black and minority participation in his women’s section and they’ll start the season in July with high hopes of achieving these goals.

Daniel Tanhai: Volunteer at Canton Liberals Football club explains how his club overcame the challenges faced by covid and shares his aspirations for the upcoming season.

For most coaches organising and coaching training sessions would be enough work in itself

But despite having a Job with British Gas on the side Daniel Tanhai and Canton Liberals have added in provision for their players from senior to junior level through the form of (virtual hats) which were online sessions once a week throughout lockdown to keep the players happy and engaged.

“We were one of the few if not the only grassroots community clubs doing that in the area.”

“We definitely felt a greater duty of care towards the junior level and we’ve done the best we can under the circumstances for them.”

“We’ve tried our best and I think we’ve done really really well.”

Daniel has been a volunteer at Canton since 2017 and has been working in football his whole coaching career with every qualification needed passed by the FAW.

Canton Liberals are a South Wales amateur club based in the premier division. It’s a community football club that runs boys and girls age groups from youth, reserve to first team level.

Daniel spoke about how his time has been with Canton liberals and his aspirations for the upcoming season.

“We have a group of talented lads, playing lower than they could’ve been in terms of ability. But it’s been about enjoyment and sticking together.”

“We want to become a welsh league football club, we’ve got the facilities to make it fit to do so”

“We’re evolving as a club, although we haven’t had success the last few years trophy wise, we want to have success off the pitch in our infrastructure and we’ve certainly done that.”

Canton Liberals will start their preparations for the new season in August in the hopes of getting their hands on more silverware and getting themselves promoted to the Welsh Football League.

What is international women’s day? why does it happen? and what I’ve learnt about it is exactly the questions I will be answering in this short blog post.

What is IWD? Well internationals women day is a world wide celebrated event held every year on the 8th of March and was established by Clara Zetkin who was a German Feminist in 1911.

Why does it happen? It is a chance to celebrate all of women’s history, to remember the struggles women have had to endure all over the world and their resistance.

Why is saying we don’t have an international men’s day not in the spirit of the occasion?

Because it takes the focus or limelight from women which is the whole purpose of an international women’s day. Of course it is important to raise awareness on the struggles men go through such as suicide rates being far higher than women but by doing this would give a platform to those to begrudge the progress women have made which is rightly celebrated with an International day.

After reading an article on Morgan Lake and it (IWD) being crucial in shattering sporting stigma’s by The National Newspaper and BT’s video on international women’s day I’m just going to list a few things I have learnt.

I feel like I have learnt now about how important it is also for women’s participation in sport to push more towards equality and the importance of international women’s day. There is a stigma that is slowly diminishing through more and more women participating in sport that Women should be slim and should not train for muscle hypertrophy. But this is something that has reduced but needs to continue to do so. I think then also the video from BT just highlights how it is just as important for women to have these role models growing up in sport as it is with men, these women being Fran Kirby or Gemma Knight are all paving the way for women athletes all around the world to be idolised by the next generation.

To begin with I watch this 11 minute video with the purpose of understanding what I don’t know and examining what I see. Then afterwards answering questions set by my lecturer about the film.

What do you notice about the style of it? Explain the format. Does it work? Why?  So I’m aware out of my own experience there are a few types of documentaries, them being Observational, which is a documentary that the filmmaking aims to be as realistic as possible recording everyday life activity without intrusion. An Expository documentary, which is when it’s set up with a specific point of view where the narrator is often speaking directly to the viewer with verbal commentary to highlight the relationship between what’s going on on screen that the viewer is seeing. Finally the third type of doc is the Participatory, which is when the filmmaker is involved directly with the films subjects, this is good for making stories. So this video was actually an interview with the film director Jonny Owen and the style of it is quite relaxed almost like a conversation with the environment it’s filmed in being a pub table Jonny answers the questions and goes into detail on telling a story almost for some of the questions. The format is Jonny speaks then once he’s finished his point a question is put on screen in writing leading on to Jonny’s next point. It is simple but effective and I believe it does work because as a viewer you are engaged by the way he answers the questions and Jonny doesn’t drag out his answers for too long before the next question is up on screen.

Who is Jonny Owen? Jonny Owen is a Welsh actor, producer and writer who’s appeared in many successful tv shows over the last century. He was born and raised in Merthyr Tydfil and even won a BAFTA in 2007 for his documentary the Aberfan Disaster.

What references or terms does the interviewee use that you are unfamiliar with? In the opening 30 seconds Jonny said the word philisophical which stood out to me, after looking up what it meant I found it’s another word similar to composed meaning he showed a calm attitude towards disappointments. Another term I wasn’t familiar with was industrial psychodelia which is later found out meant an array of experiences or changes of perceptions to industrial things.

What are the stand-out lines for you as a journalist? 
If you were going to write a story for your website, what would it be? Why? Some of the standout lines for me would have to be I think it would be the words he had to say on his father and that generation of people being so different to us in the way his father died with asbestos in his lungs and other health complications but this was what men of that generation had to deal with in their tough environment growing up which for them was normality. Also the make sure an 18 year old can watch this film line, because that in itself is so important to bear in mind when creating content for anything that first you hit the younger generation because that is where the majority of engagement comes from. It is important to be original with your story as a journalist like with this interview Jonny is saying a lot of things to do with the doc that the viewer might have already known so as a story I would pick from Jonny’s answer to the “what stories didn’t make it into the film?” question.

I then watched the following video podcast

Who is the target audience here? The target audience is of course Celtic fans but also fans of Jonny Owen’s work and the younger generation.

What do you notice about the types of questions being asked? I noticed that the interviewer before leading on to his next questions acknowledges what Jonny had previously said and shortly adds his own opinion or thoughts towards it leading up to his next questions and I feel that is important in a sense that Jonny is then more obliged to answer when he can see his interviewer is engaged in what he’s saying if he’s speaking more about it and also in that sense for an outside perspective as a viewer you then see that the interviewer isn’t coming off as robotic merely just asking questions.

How are they different from the first interview? I think they are on a more personal level because this style of interview you can see the interviewer is speaking with Jonny and not just questions edited in on a script which because of this you get a lot more of a raw response or flow to what is being said.

How important is the presenter to the interview in this instance? Why? This is a podcast format so the interviewer is very important in the sense he runs the show and is also in charge of the questions and depending on how well he connects with Jonny determines how good of a response he’ll get and the better the response the better his podcast is to watch so the presenter is very important.

What did you learn about the film from this interview that you didn’t hear about in the first one? I learnt that Jonny had thought about doing a trilogy or a series rather than one film since it was such a task to fit all three Kings into one documentary movie.

Beside the film, what other lines (story angles) stand out from this interview? I think there are many little avenues you could go down in terms of stories that aren’t based off just the film because the interviewer asks a lot of questions which aren’t solely based around the film but more so football as a such so maybe Jonny’s opinion on Scottish managers and how he has such a good relationship with Celtic as a club despite being Welsh.

As part of the Digital Marketing and Pr in Sport module I was assigned to a group with the aim to come up with an idea for “good news” as the theme of an event for Time to Talk Day. Members of my group included me Zach,Owen,Tobias,Rhianna and a couple of the first year boys.

After being put into our breakout groups we came up with the idea to do a sports themed quiz which would include groups of sports teams that wanted to take part and make it into a competition. We would also have well known people in the industry send us videos of them reading out questions about themselves as pre-recordings for part of some of the rounds in the quiz.

We later all assigned each other roles we thought we would each thrive tho most in. Zach’s role was to jointly host the quiz alongside Rhianna whilst also editing the quiz since he was the most skilled on that front. Tobias and Owens roles were to make some of the questions and themes whilst also contacting sports athletes and well known people in the industry to take part in the quiz with pre recorded videos of themselves for Zach to edit in. The first years also made a few of the questions whist I made the Starter packs.

My contribution being the starter packs meant that I was responsible for one of the four rounds in the quiz my round being four pictures that are associated or in relation to a famous sports person and the participants would have to guess who that person was for a point.

Teamwork wise I thought our communication as a whole was very good in the snapchat group chat we made and everyone carried out the roles they were assigned with no problems. However as of my individual contribution I feel I could have done more despite only being set one task by asking in the group chat for extra things to do perhaps. I feel I definitely sat back and took the backseat whilst people like Zach carried us through a little. Luckily this didn’t seem to have much of an effect at all on our end result as the quiz I feel was a huge success.

Next time perhaps I could improve by taking more of a demanding role in the group and being more active as a whole with communication and the work I produce for the team however all in all I believe this quiz was a great success and is something each member of the group can be proud of for their contributions.

Earlier I watched the short documentary produced by the BBC and presented by Annie Price on the rise of female fighters in one of the fastest growing sports in Britain. In this documentary she met with Molly McCann the first English woman to win the ultimate fight championship top division and the UFC.

I personally have always noticed the lack of negativity in terms of viewers comments on female fights, it’s very hard to find trolling and discrimination of any women fighters in the comments section or tweets perhaps in comparison to a woman football match for say. I believe the woman fighters are at the same level of the males in the UFC and deserve all the credit they get just as much as the males do. Here are a few tweets I could find accurately presenting most peoples views on women fights.

Women UFC fighters show so much respect for the sport. I love watching them fight rather they win or lose. It's the respect for the hard work that's amazing.

— James Crumble (@JamesCrumble7) November 29, 2020

The elite 10-15 women fighters are just as technically good as the elite male fighters. They have just as much heart if not more. They are just as fun to watch if not more but the quality drop off goes from elite fighter to part-time fighter. UFC needs to pay these women properly pic.twitter.com/Fl17JuVq5J

— 🇯🇲 KHAMZAT WILL FALL AT THE FEET OF LEON🇬🇧 (@See_U_Soon_Boi) January 5, 2021

Just watched UFC with a bunch of male friends who are serious UFC fans

To them, the women’s fight was just as important and entertaining as the men’s fights. They knew the fighters, their styles, strengths and records

Very cool to see women’s sport genuinely equal with men’s

— Reuben Bramanathan (@bramanathan) February 9, 2020

The first thing I took from watching this documentary is my level of respect has risen for anyone who competes in this sport as it is clear to see the incredible determination and hardship a fighter must put their body through to even make weight to fight their opponent and the injuries that then come with it are potentially life threatening.

I noticed in the way it’s presented with a voice over from Annie Price who also meets the fighters and gets to know them on a more personal level. Asking some in depth questions about their lives and just hanging out with them where they train, attending fights and giving us the viewer behind the scene coverage. It even shows snippets of fights and the brutal injuries after to further emphasise the risks that come with being a professional cage fighter.

The documentary is scripted in a very natural manor, the way Annie Price speaks to the viewer makes it easy to be engaged and learn from what she is telling you about. There’s use of a variety of music during the documentary depending on the mood of what circumstance their in for example when showing a fight there’s more gritty music to that of when Annie is travelling or asking questions to fighters. They also emphasise the sounds of kicks and punches on screen to add to the viciousness of what your already seeing on screen to again put the point across how dangerous of a sport it really is.

Manchester united legend and England world cup winner Sir Bobby Charlton won three league titles, one FA Cup and of course one European title during his 17 year career with Manchester United and it also cannot be forgotten that he was a survivor of the Munich air disaster of 1958.

The reaction as followed on twitter was that of sadness and appreciation for what Bobby has achieved in his career and in life however raised eyebrows on whether further action needs to be taken by the Football Association in terms of reducing the risk of ex professionals contracting this disease later in life.

Yet another hero of our 1966 World Cup winning team has been diagnosed with dementia. Perhaps the greatest of them all, @SirBobby. This is both very sad and deeply concerning.

— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) November 1, 2020

Charlton lost his brother and fellow World Cup winner back in July and this news comes only one week after his former teammate Nobby Stiles also passed away following a long battle with dementia also. This makes Bobby the fifth member of England’s 1966 World Cup winning side to be diagnosed with the disease. This has to raise the question whether the repetitive heading of a football throughout a footballers career is a determining factor with being diagnosed with this illness?

A study by The University of East Anglia on the 7th of January 2020 https://www.alzheimersresearchuk.org/study-former-footballers-dementia-risk/ announced a new study to test memory and thinking skills in former professional football players to see if they showed any cognitive changes due to concussions and head injuries. The study found a clear link between ex professional footballers and dementia but state it’s not yet clear whether or how football can address this issue.

A bigger study by The University of Glasgow in 2019. https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/archiveofnews/2019/october/headline_681082_en.html They could not find a definitive link between heading a football and dementia however their researches found that “former professionals are three and a half times more likely to die from heading a football than the average person”.

Thoughts and best wishes are of course with Bobby’s family hoping he can overcome this disease for help and guidance or just more information on the disease visit https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/dementia/help-and-support/

Serena Williams made an an appearance on the TED show where she was asked a series of questions in a short interview, one of those being her pregnancy. Serena revealed she knew she was pregnant two days before the beginning of the Australian open. The main question she was faced with was “can I play?” Despite this the American went on to win her 23rd grand slam title over her 20 year career whilst pregnant!

She admitted to changing her playing style with the knowledge she had a baby on the way. “I had to bottle up all these emotions and do what was expected of me because its a much bigger story if I fail to win the tournament”. Despite her pregnancy Serena made it clear she wasn’t going to give up on her tennis career and she still has a lot to give.

Serena wants to be a role model for women in sport and the way she sees her self doing that is by continuously winning! “when I have a goal i’ll do anything to reach that goal” Serena then looked back jokingly on her husbands proposal stating “I was angry when he proposed to me because it was in the middle of my training to pass Steffi Grafes record” And she did pass that record.

Serena was in the public eye from a young age and all through her teenage years stating “like every teenager I wasn’t comfortable with my body” “I didn’t understand why I had muscles” since her teenage years Serena has grown to accept and love her body seeing it as her blessing that helped her achieve what she has in her illustrious tennis career.

3 years on from this interview Serena is still playing seeking for her 24th and 25th grand slam title to surpass the record held by Margaret Court, who won 24 titles over the course of her career. One thing you cannot fault of Serena is her incredible determination to be the best.

The documentary is giving an insight into the challenges Freddie has faced over the last 20 years living with this disorder and was a great opportunity for him to tell his story. This is a great example of good journalism.

I feel this documentary was beneficial for me and to anyone that watches it for learning how to become a good journalist. I feel they handled the sensitive subject perfectly helping the reader/viewer really understand the issues revolving around this disease how and why people have it. The choice of music, photos etc all added to it to make it an engaging emotional documentary.

The interviewees asked some very straightforward and quite ruthless questions to get some deep answers from Freddie, but one question which stood out as being the most significant is why men with this disease don’t look for medical help? Despite it being a sensitive subject I feel the answers they got just made the documentary even more powerful and hard hitting. It was very surprising the access the people that were interviewed got to Freddie but that may have been because the people who got interviewed had the condition themselves.

I believe the message from this documentary is good because it spreads awareness about this disease, I myself had heard of bulimia but had no idea the extent of the disease and that even a well internationally established cricketer like Freddie could suffer with it for so long. I don’t believe there were any unanswered questions which again adds to the documentary being such an enticing watch.