It’s been just over six years since Caney’s Corner Live was born.
Our first Your Local Paper sporting ‘chat’ night was held at the Duke’s Head and it saw Norwich City legends Iwan Roberts and Darren Huckerby take to the stage with me to entertain a healthy crowd.
Things moved quickly as we gathered momentum and hosted another evening, this time with Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock on September 5, 2019.
The biggest night yet, with former Manchester United star Lee Sharpe, arrived literally days before the Covid-19 pandemic pushed us into a national lockdown.
And it took a couple of years for us to return with our first sell out at the King’s Lynn hotel thanks to the arrival of household name and ex-Arsenal player Paul Merson in March 2022.
Since then, I have carried on hosting the odd event but usually at Northwold Sports & Social Club. But now it’s time to dust the mic off properly and start taking the side gig a lot more seriously.
Since former King’s Lynn Stars media man Marc Gent encouraged me to host a night with rider Niels-Kristian Iversen – 10 years ago in November – I have enjoyed sitting on a stage and interviewing a wide variety of guests.
It’s a whole universe away from the world I previously existed in which saw me terrified about public speaking.
So now hopefully I’ll do a lot more of it now I’ve launched Sporting Knights. It works with sports clubs, organisations and venues to put on unforgettable live events across East Anglia and beyond.
These bespoke evenings of sporting entertainment place icons centre stage as their sports stories are brought to life in front of a live crowd.
Ideas and opportunities are everywhere but for now there is a real chance that we’ll end a three-year wait to return to the Duke’s before the year is out – watch this space. It’s a venue that provides plenty of happy memories for all who were involved.
“Live events further helped the newspaper become the talk of the town,” said Gary Bush, the operations manager at Your Local Paper from 2013 to 2023.
“The feel-good factor created from them helped strengthen the love of our product – all more important than the much-needed extra revenue that was created.”
Hopefully punters will continue to back these new evenings as they’ll follow a very similar format to our old ones and should bring some star names back to a popular venue. It was standing room only during the Merson show and while it might take a while to gather that sort of support again, hopefully people will return.
For now, I’ll continue working in the background with it and writing my column. Somehow, I’m still doing it after almost eight years even though I fear I’m running out of things to say. I best save some words back for Sporting Knights I guess.
It won’t just be putting on shows at our old stamping ground that keeps Sporting Knights moving.
I genuinely believe there is an opportunity to work with a host of clubs, organisations and venues across the district and beyond to help them benefit from one of our evenings too.
Got a clubhouse, bar or event space that barely gets used? Need to increase income or create a new revenue stream? Want to give your members and/or punters something else to get excited about? Keen to provide a different reason to attract new people to your club or venue? Hoping to be part of an event that people never forget? If you’ve answered yes to just ONE question above, then Sporting Knights is here to help.
Its job is to put on an evening of sporting entertainment that generates profits for your club, venue or organisation. It’s exactly what we did, for the eighth time, at Northwold Sports & Social Club in May when we worked with two Norwich City legends Bryan Gunn and Rob Newman.
“We’ve made so many memories by working with Sporting Knights to bring a host of famous names to our club,” said David Lavender, the club’s social secretary.
“The events are so well supported, the bar is always packed and punters have a great evening.”
There are various ways to build a package but all costs are signed off before we proceed so there is no risk for you. To find out more email gavin@sportingknights.co.uk or call 07534 330909.
The death of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre in a car accident was a real stop you in your tracks moment.
Jota is a Premier League star, an international footballer, aged just 28.
The outpouring of grief and shock across the world has shown how painfully the news has been received by all in the football family, not just Liverpool fans.
The fact he was recently married, had three children, and passed alongside his sibling made it all the more devastating. It was a true tragedy.
The impact of sport, and football, on society was extremely evident as the reaction to the incident caused shockwaves around the world.
The sad reality of life is that people die on the roads every day. So what made this heartbreaking accident more painful than any other for those who didn’t know Jota directly?
Football remains a true form of escapism. For 90 minutes, the only focus is what happens on a football pitch. We are transported, present and removed from reality.
Death remains an uncomfortable fact of life and something that most people’s brains will want to protect them from, making it seem unreal.
We don’t want to think about or confront the fact of not being here or the same happening to our loved ones. In that moment last week, reality snapped twice as hard when we realised Jota had passed.
Sports stars are adored and placed on some sort of pedestal.
They feel like they’re superhuman. Immortal. They don’t live by the same rules.
But moments like this remind you that they’re just the same as us, albeit with an extra special talent that millions get to enjoy and feel part of.
That’s why Jota’s passing has hurt so many people, so very deeply.
