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"Seriously, I could captain this side." It is the sporting equivalent of staring up at a painting in a modern art gallery and stating: "My kid could do better than that". Or taking a sip of wine in an expensive restaurant and muttering: "Yeah, suppose it's alright".

Over the past 15 years Australia has had an awful lot of would-be captains, probably millions of them - and an awful lot of them have been English.

They popped up in pubs and bars and on sofas, throwing their hat into the ring every time an Aussie batsman passed 100 in an Ashes Test, every time an English partnership had seen off the seamers and the ball was tossed to . No doubt I said it a few times myself: "Seriously, I could captain this side."

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Twickenham

If showed England were travelling in the right direction and suggested they were travelling fast, then was the reality check Martin Johnson's side needed.

Any side with as many players plying their trade in the top European and southern hemisphere leagues as Samoa have is never going to be easy prey, and so it came to pass at Twickenham on Saturday.

At the post-match news conference you got the sense Johnson had gained almost as much pleasure from the gritty performance as from the scintillating display against the Wallabies last week, stating that the stop-start nature of the game and disallowed tries were "not necessarily a bad thing".

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When it comes to sport, it is difficult to think of a country that punches higher above its weight than Samoa. Samoa has nevertheless become arguably rugby's hottest spot in the southern hemisphere, with its diaspora blazing an even hotter trail the length and breadth of the globe.

But while Samoa hits hard, the remarkable thing is it should hit harder. When, as Western Samoa, the , scalping Wales and Argentina along the way, the pace, brawn and sheer fury of their play took the breath away. And if you were on the receiving end of one of their tackles, you wondered if you would ever get it back again.

Samoa repeated the trick at the next two World Cups before reality began to bite, a combination of inadequate funding, lack of global support and poor organisation leaving them exposed as the more established nations became ever more professional.

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You sometimes hear the argument that visiting finger spinners simply aren't a deciding factor in Ashes series in Australia, an argument that, when scrutinised, appears to be buttressed largely by cherry-picked evidence.

Ashley Giles, it is true, was wholly ineffective on , and while his replacement Monty Panesar took a five-for on his , he was tamed in Melbourne and Sydney.

toiled for scant reward in 2002-03, and even though had his successes - including 5-61 in Sydney in 1990-91 - they were few and far between.

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MEN Arena, Manchester

I knew it was going to be a strange night the moment Audley Harrison removed his robe to reveal a T-shirt bearing the legend: 'Keep Stonebridge Adventure Playground Open'. Barely 15 minutes later, I found myself asking the question: What did Stonebridge Adventure Playground do to deserve that?

Harrison somehow managed to be even less effective than even his most vociferous critics could have imagined. One punch landed in just shy of eight minutes of boxing. All part of the game-plan, Audley claimed after the fight, before denying he had frozen in the moment.

At the weigh-in on Friday, a fellow journalist referred to the impending bout as the "best worst fight" he had ever covered. It was a moment of wry sobriety amid the giddy hysteria being stirred up by certain media outlets, although, I should add, the journalist in question did not go as far as committing his words to print.

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Manchester

If Audley Harrison loses to David Haye on Saturday he could do worse than setting himself up as some sort of mystic guru, receiving visitors on a Californian hilltop, administering medicine for the mind: "Yes, my child, you can."

For all the false dawns, all the unfulfilled promises, all the evidence which suggests - nay, screams - the 39-year-old has no chance of dethroning WBA heavyweight champion Haye in Manchester, there are those Harrison has managed to convince. Or so he would have us believe. 

"Anyone who knows boxing, they all say it's an even-money fight," Harrison told ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sport. But closer inspection of the raft of predictions, from fair-weather fans to former fighters, reveals very few are saying anything of the sort: stating, as , and Evander Holyfield effectively have, that Harrison has a "puncher's chance" is not the same as saying they think he is going to prevail.

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When David Haye and Audley Harrison meet in Manchester on Saturday, it will be only the third time in history two Brits have fought for a world heavyweight crown.

Haye, the WBA title-holder, is a big favourite against the former Olympic champion and while many are intrigued by the match-up - the MEN Arena is a 20,000 sell-out - there are some purists who believe it is a pale imitation of all-British match-ups of yesteryear.

³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sport looks at five heavyweight 'Battles of Britain' that Haye-Harrison might struggle to live up to.

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There are those who think a boxer's primary consideration is to appear credible in the eyes of the public, whereas in fact a boxer's primary consideration is to make as much money as possible before getting out, hopefully with all their faculties intact.

That's a boxer's prerogative - they're the ones putting their lives on the line in the ring.

It just so happens the big-money fights are usually the big-risk fights - and therefore the fights the fans want to see. But, occasionally, a boxer will be offered the chance to make a stack of cash at what he deems to be a reduced risk. And, frankly, he would be mad not to take it, regardless of what some of the fans might think.

Which is why David Haye's decision to defend his WBA heavyweight crown against Audley Harrison made perfect sense. There is little point fighting top-10 but little-known fighters such as or when you know you can pack out a 20,000-seat arena and make millions via pay-per-view instead.

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