Amir’s got old fighting bug back
HENRY SLADE’S jar of jelly babies will be waiting for him as usual in the dressing room at Sandy Park on Saturday before the showdown with Montpellier.
It is part of the ritual for the Exeter centre who refuses to allow diabetes to stand in the way of his dream of becoming an international sportsman.
The sweets are a tasty safety net if his blood sugars are low before kick-off. Maintaining them at the correct level is essential, not just to his performance, but his well-being.
Get it right and all is well, get it wrong and the consequences could be severe.
For a player who makes rugby union look so instinctive, Slade has a lot on his mind.
“I have had it my whole professional career – since I was 18 – so I’m used to dealing with it,” said Slade.
“The conditioners are quite good to me at the club. They will make sure that when I come in on a match day there will be 10 jelly babies in my spot. I don’t always need to have any of them, but they are there just in case. I’ve needed them a couple of times.
“I don’t tend to have any at half-time because during a game your adrenaline affects your blood-sugar levels. I actually tend to have an insulin injection at half-time to bring myself down because I get too high. That does the trick.”
You would never know of the complications from the grace he brings to the rough and tumble of rugby as he continues to put the X-factor into Exeter. England coach Eddie Jones might yet need to be won over fully – though he did try Slade in both centre positions this autumn – but the Chiefs fans have no doubts.
From the moment he broke into the first team as a teenager, it was clear this was a player who seemed to have an unusual amount of time on the ball.
Where Slade feels he has developed this season is in passing on that gift to others around him with the speed of his distribution. At 24, the Devonian is still adding strings to his bow.
“At the end of last season I was a bit frustrated. Over those weeks in the summer you have quite a long time to sit back and think and I remember deciding then that I wanted to bring a bit more pace on to the ball,” he AMIR KHAN wants to be remembered as a world-class fighter rather than being the funny bloke afraid of snakes, bugs and creepy crawlies on I’m A Celebrity.
The former light-welterweight world champion also says the days of being in the news for all the wrong reasons are behind him as he aims to get back on track in the ring.
Khan, 31, confirmed yesterday he has a signed a three-fight deal with Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Sport and will return to the ring on April 21 at Liverpool’s Echo Arena.
It will be his first bout since his brutal knockout defeat – the fourth of his 35-fight career – by Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez in May 2016.
In that time, Khan has had two operations on his right hand but also found himself at war with his wife, things on social media, stupid things, but it is about learning from mistakes. I’m a 31-year-old man, not a kid any more. It’s all about moving forward and focusing on my boxing.
“I don’t want to live that celebrity life. I’m not a celebrity, I’m a normal guy. I did the show for me, for people to see the real me, that’s going to help me with my boxing. I want to be remembered for boxing.”
Khan’s three-fight deal with Hearn has an option of a further fight while the pair, who once said they would never work with each other, have put all previous bad blood behind them after years of bad-mouthing the other in public.
Talks started before Khan went to Australia for the TV show and continued through his