France v Ireland LIVE blog

Only 31 or so hours to go... loads of time!  Live blog is below.  Do take part but in the lead-up to the match and, of course, during the game itself.  There'll be plenty of posts about the match over the coming days so be sure to come back and check out The Almost Daily Sports Blog.

Bernard Abú!!

So D-Day has arrived for Bernard Dunne. There’s not long now until his battle with Poonsawat, and the nerves are high. Both boxers weighed in successfully yesterday (though there was a slight scare as the Thai had to climb the scales three times to come in under the 122lb limit).

We here at The Almost Daily Sports Blog are providing coverage all day, as you can see, and we want you to take part. There’s a few ways that you can do that. Any tweets with the hashtag dunnelive (i.e. #dunnelive) should appear in the console automatically, while you’re also welcome to leave comments at the bottom of this page.

You can also comment in the CoveritLive console itself – for most of you these comments require moderation and this will be provided at various points from this evening, hopefully, and certainly during the fight itself.

So start off NOW by taking the poll, and let us know who you think will win. Feel free to tweet/comment with your predictions for the fight or anything else you want to say. Hopefully you’ll enjoy what we have to offer here later today.

One final thing, to get you in the mood, here’s Newstalk’s commentary from the final round of Dunne v Cordoba in March. If this doesn’t get your pulse racing, nothing will.



C'mon Bernard!!

T'Other Fella

As promised, here's a profile of Poonsawat Kratingdaenggym, Bernard Dunne's opponent this Saturday.

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Let's be honest, Poonsawat Kratingdaenggym isn't the sort of name that rolls off the tongue. Yet, difficult as it is to pronounce, the Thai's name is on the lips of all Irish boxing fans ahead of Saturday's bout with Bernard Dunne.

The main question, to be honest, is 'Who is Poonsawat Kratingdaenggym?'

Well, that's not an easy question to answer but I'm going to try. Make no mistake, this won't be an easy fight for Dunne. Like Bernard, Poonsawat has only one defeat in his pro career. Boxrec ranks him fifth (three places ahead of the Dubliner) while the WBA have installed him as their mandatory challenger for Bernard's WBA Super Bantamweight belt.

A quick look at his record reveals a lot of truths. Very few of his wins have been against 'name' fighters, while two of his last five fights have been against men with losing records. There are impressive names on his list though. Poonsawat has a win over Somsak Sithchatchawal, a former holder of Dunne's WBA Super Bantamweight crown. That was an eleventh round knockout in March of last year, and it was this win that gave Poonsawat the right to fight for the belt on Saturday. He's also beaten four-weight World Champion Leo Gamez (indeed, Poonsawat finished the Venezuelan's career) while there is one name that Irish fans will recognise - Poonsawat handed Ricardo Cordoba his first pro defeat with a split decision win in 2005.

As I said, he also has one defeat, and that was in his only fight that hasn't taken place in Thailand. Poonsawat travelled to Germany to take on Wladimir Sidorenko in 2006 and was beaten, in a unanimous decision, by the Ukrainian (who himself has a pair of draws with Cordoba).  That defeat seems to have been a key point in Poonsawat's career. Up until then, he was pushed, and he was going for big things. The above wins, the key ones, all came before then (with the exception of the Sithchatchawal fight) and since then, most of his fights have been against fighters with less than stellar records. The bout with Dunne is his toughest since then.

This analysis leads me to make these two points about Poonsawat ahead of Saturday's fight:

1. He's a tough cookie, there's no doubt about it. He's beaten big names, and his record of 27 knockouts from 38 wins shows that he has power to boot.  He's ranked higher than Dunne and this very well may be Dunne's sternest test to boot, Cordoba included.


2. Poonsawat is a fighter looking for a second coming.  His career has stalled (bar one win) for over three years and Saturday is a must-win for him, if he is to get it back on track.  He lost his one fight away from home, against Sidorenko, in Germany and he's already making pre-emptive excuses ahead of his trip to Dublin.

Yes, those are two contradictory points, but when we know so little about Poonsawat, we don't know which is the truth.  He could be a desperate fighter who Dunne is taking on at the right time, or he could break Irish hearts this weekend.  His record shows that he is more than capable of both, but we have no way of knowing which is the truth.  Dunne's camp should be confident that the second point is what will materialise, while at the same time fearing the first.  I certainly am not be confident enough to predict this fight, either way.

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Don't forget our LIVE blog this Saturday.  You can sign up for an email reminder for it below.  It will kick off during the day on Saturday and we'll be blogging from inside the O2 Arena, giving you a flavour of the atmosphere direct from Dublin.

A Venture Into The Unknown

Last March, on the same day that our rugby team won their first Grand Slam in 61 years, another remarkable sporting event occured in Ireland.

Bernard Dunne became WBA Super Bantamweight Champion in one of the best fights you'll ever see, knocking out Panama's Ricardo Cordoba in the 11th Round at Dublin's o2 Arena. I, along with the boss, was lucky to be there and we're going back to the o2 this Saturday for Dunne's first defence, against Poonsawat Kratingdaeng.

We're going to be blogging all day, about the journey up, the food, the cost, the fights and those quirky things that make a day like this memorable (this time I WILL figure out just how Marty Morrissey gets a crowd excited).  Our start time is scheduled for 8:00 p.m. but you can expect the comments to come in long, long before that and then they'll ramp up nearer to and during fight time.

I have some idea about how this will work, but not a massive amount! There will be issues, technical ones, but I hope that we'll be able to convey a sense of what's going on and give you a bit of the atmosphere live from Dublin.  I hope this will be the first of many live blogs here on the site.

To get you in the mood for the fight there'll be plenty of Bernard Dunne related stuff here on The Almost Daily Sports Blog all week. Sign up below if you want an email reminder about the event, and be sure to check back here on Saturday for all the shenanigans!!!