‘Fantastic’ birthday surprise for The Bar’s Harry

More than 100 members of the ‘fantastic’ boxing community, including Anthony Crolla and Dennis McCann, have united to wish a boxing-mad teenager a happy 16th birthday by video message – much to the delight of his thankful coach.

Harry Radford, a member at Southern Counties’ The Bar Boxing Club in Worthing, has autism and has ‘been feeling a little bit down’ without his daily gym routine because of venue closures due to Coronavirus.

That prompted his club’s Head Coach, Adrian Clark, to appeal for people to record and send on birthday messages, from which he expected a few local replies.

But things quickly snowballed, so that Harry was today presented with around an hour’s worth of footage ranging from five second snippets to one video of six or seven minutes from boxers and coaches across the country of all ages and abilities.

Just a few of the video that have been submitted are compiled on the video below.

“We just wanted to put a smile on Harry’s face, and hopefully this will have done that,” said Clark.

“When I asked around people who I knew in boxing, I thought we might get seven or eight messages to give him, but to get over 100 is phenomenal and shows how much people do care, even at this difficult time.

“To get people who don’t even know Harry take the time out to do this for him is amazing and it never ceases to surprise me just how good the boxing community is with things like this.

“Mentally, what is happening at the moment is hard for a lot of people, especially if they can’t go to the gym to box, but things like this, reaching out to people and showing them you care, really can make a difference.”

If you want to know more about how to protect your mental health during Coronavirus lockdown, check out our Staying Active During Covd-19 page, where you can find a range of articles containing useful hints and tips.