http://www.boxingnewsonline.net JULY 4, 2019 lBOXING NEWSl 25
hospital and explained that was part of what I
had just been through. It was a symptom of it. I
thought, ‘F**king hell, is this what my life is going to
be like now?’ I thought I was having a stroke.”
Key to the dual Farrell rehabilitation was the
opening of the People’s Gym in Heywood in June- This was a project with which both brothers
were involved and Nathan, dedicated to the
cause if still unsure about the virtues of boxing,
would spend his days working on the gym and his
nights sleeping inside the premises. The labour
often stretched from five o’clock in the morning
until midnight but did him good. It first gave him
a purpose, then it set him on his way to finding
himself.
Alas, what he found in July 2014, some 18
months after his brother’s brain injury, was an
injury of his own: a grade three ACL ligament tear
in his problematic right knee. It wasn’t exactly what
Nathan was looking for.
“The hospital strung me along for four years,” he
said. “They did a keyhole operation but the result
of that was I wasn’t in great shape. I was told to go
and live my life and do what I could, but I couldn’t
really do anything. I couldn’t walk upstairs or to
the corner shop without my knee seizing up. I also
ballooned to 14-and-a-half stone. That’s when my
depression kicked in.”
“I’ve tried to be supportive as a brother but also
hard with him,” said Kieran. “I think everybody
needs that person who can tell them things
straight. We’ve had our little fallouts, as brothers
do, but I feel like I’ve always been the one who has
told him straight.
“I don’t really want to mollycoddle him. My mum
does that for him. My mum’s like his best mate
and sticks up for him no matter what. If he killed
someone, she would still say it weren’t his fault.
That’s just their relationship.
“My relationship with him is different. My dad
wasn’t hard on me, but he was tough, and that’s
probably where I get it from. If I wasn’t like this with
Nathan, we’d all be walking on eggshells and get
nowhere.”
After his injury, Nathan was back at the People’s
Gym, this time to help train some of the amateur
boxers and guide them to titles. He then got his
professional trainer’s licence, long before applying
for one to box himself, and returned to tarmacking
work.
It was during this increased period of activity
parts of his body – the knee, the mind – he
assumed were wrecked for good started to
strengthen and then 12 months ago, buoyed by
this breakthrough, he told Kieran he was thinking
about boxing again.
“To be honest,” Nathan said, “nobody took me
seriously. Kieran was very doubtful because of what
we had gone through and because of what I’d seen
and my knee problems. I wouldn’t say I got laughed
at, but it was only me who thought it was possible.
“Being a competitive person, once everybody said
I couldn’t do it, that’s when I knew I was going to do
it. So off I went, training on my own.”
First came a trip to a gym in Bolton, the Premier
Boxing Club, which was where Nathan lost weight,
sparred some rounds, and discovered he had lost
none of what had helped him win 10 amateur ➤GRUELLING:
Crolla en route
to the
10-round
points victory
that would
spell the end
of Kieran’s
career
Photo:
ACTION IMAGES/
LEE SMITH