Boxing: Etches carries county hopes

ADAM Etches is the last man standing for Derbyshire in the ABA Senior Novice Championships.

A narrow victory by the slenderest of margins took the St Michael's boxer through in the pre-quarter final round of the championships at Retford Town Hall.

He moves through to a quarter-final against the North-West Counties champion in Manchester next Sunday but Merlin's Asif Akhtar missed out on the chance to join him.

Etches has made his mark by winning inside the distance but he was pushed all the way by Yorkshire champion Michael Smith of Cleckheaton in their class B 75kg clash.

However, Etches forced his man to take a standing count in the first round and went into the last round with a 7-3 points lead on the computer scoring system.

Smith knew he had to try to force the issue but Etches caught him again and forced a second standing count.

That seemed to have put the seal on victory for the Chesterfield 18-year-old but Smith scored with enough punches of his own to make the score 8-8 at the end of the bout.

That meant the decision had to go to countback and Etches was just ahead 19-18 to move through to the next stage.

Akhtar had looked impressively good on his way to the Midlands title for a second successive season but had a bad day at Retford.

He faced Cameron Stevenson of Hull club St Paul's at class B 64kg and the usual snap was missing from his punches as he fell behind on points.

Trailing 2-0 at the end of the first and 4-2 after the second, Akhtar appeared to be running short of energy as Stevenson caught him with his gloves low in the third and opened up an 8-2 lead.

By the end of the contest, Stevenson was a clear winner at 12-2.

There was better news for Akhtar's younger brother, Rizwan, as three Merlin youngsters took part in a Hulton Abbey show at Stoke.

Akhtar gave away weight and experience against Wednesbury's Jake Doody but did enough to take a unanimous points decision.

Making his third appearance for the club, Ryan Cokayne got the better of a split decision against Jack Morgan of Stoke YMCA to claim a second victory.

Merlin's Jake Morgan completed a treble of successes when he was a unanimous points winner against Ben Hogan of Llandudno, North Wales.

MORE amateur boxing news, with a report from South Normanton School of Boxing's show, in tomorrow's Derby Telegraph.