0 Comments | Hull Daily Mail, Mar 22, 2010 | by PHIL BUCKINGHAM

Portsmouth Smith 37, O’Hara 88, Kanu 89 3 Hull City Folan 27, 73 2 Attendance: 16,513 Away fans: 1,000est FOR 88 minutes at Fratton Park, the decision to call time on Phil Brown’s historic reign as Hull City manager looked like the ultimate masterstroke.

Then came the bitter finale to Iain Dowie’s opening game in charge and the gamble instead began to look futile.

Suffering the cruellest of blows to their survival ambitions, the fresh eyes of Dowie failed to halt City’s ominous downward spiral.

After conceding two goals inside 64 disastrous late seconds to see their world turned upside down, the galling nature of the latest defeat ensures the positivity injected by Dowie may already be under threat.

A brace from forgotten man Caleb Folan had seen the Tigers’ 2-1 up with just two minutes remaining to promise victory and an instant sense of vindication for chairman Adam Pearson.

Then, with little more than two minutes remaining, all those hopes of Dowie inspiring an immediate resurrection were undone by two crippling Portsmouth goals.

First came an equaliser from Jamie O’Hara and then a sucker punch from Kanu to bring a gutsy Portsmouth the unlikeliest of wins.

With 1,000 travelling fans looking on with disbelief, it was then you began to wonder if City’s name was destined to join Portsmouth’s in next year’s Championship.

“It’s like I’ve been punched in the stomach. Several times,” said Dowie, and his eager return to management demanded empathy.

Bouncing around his technical area with passion and enthusiasm, the new manager had been teased with the prospect of delivering City”s first away win in over 12 months at the very first time of asking.

Instead, he must now protect what little optimism is left from his opening fixture and encourage the green shoots of recovery.

Defeat to Portsmouth was the fifth in succession for City and with three points and an inferior goal difference to make up on 17th- placed West Ham in eight games, it is becoming an increasingly tall order for Dowie.

Bullishly, he demanded optimism ahead of his first home fixture against Fulham this weekend but time and luck are fast running out.

The nature of the latest set-back in the quest for survival was familiarly painful.

Just as Arsenal had robbed City of a point in the third minute of stoppage time to signal the end of Brown’s tenure, Portsmouth snatched three priceless points from Dowie’s back pocket.

The obvious danger will be deflation but this was not all doom and gloom as Dowie had a collection of players desperate to deliver for him and the club.

There was shape, there was energy and there was desire – everything and more the new boss had demanded from his troops when addressing them for the first time last Thursday.

There was no change in fortune, though, no matter how hard he tried.

A recall for Folan after a late injury to Jozy Altidore looked like being the twist Dowie craved after he turned home Craig Fagan’s low drive close on the half hour and gave City their just rewards after Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink had struck the post.

For Folan, the goal could not have been sweeter.

Cast into the shadows under Brown after an ill-fated loan move to Middlesbrough sparked a war of words, a return to prominence was immediate under Dowie.

Even after slack defending had seen Tommy Smith cancel out his opening goal close to half-time, Folan restored City’s lead 17 minutes from time with a cool finish from Richard Garcia’s through- ball.

Eighteen months had passed since Folan’s previous goal – the winner in City’s opening Premier League fixture against Fulham – but this brace sadly failed to be as decisive.

A Portsmouth equaliser looked unlikely as the Tigers confidently played down the clock – until Jimmy Bullard was penalised for a raised foot on the edge of the City box.

Up stepped O’Hara to fire in a delightful equaliser with his left- foot and that, you thought, was that.

But, as has become all too familiar, the Tigers conspired to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Garcia’s stray pass played in Nadhir Belhadj to pull back for Kanu, who finished through the desperate final attempts of the City defence.

For a Portsmouth side that have seen four owners bring administration and certain relegation this season, Fratton Park was a fitting scene for such chaos.

One missed opportunity has now passed Dowie and his men by.

With just eight games remaining, they cannot afford too many more.

THE VERDICT Plenty of spirit, plenty of positives, but no points, thanks to two late Portsmouth goals which wrecked Iain Dowie’s hopes of making a winning start to his tenure as Hull City boss.

Caleb Folan’s two strikes were Tigers’ highlights in the 3-2 defeat.

It’s difficult not to think City may well live to rue Saturday’s late show from O’Hara and Kanu.

THE BOSSES DOWIEON Tigers’ defeat at Fratton Park…

“It’s a cruel, cruel game but there was enough spirit and tenacity to please me.”

Folan’s double strike…

“Caleb looked powerful and he responded in great fashion.”

Coaching rather than media work..

IRD’s pursuit ‘wrong in law’

0 Comments | Press, The; Christchurch, New Zealand, Jul 27, 2010

Former Securitibank boss John George Russell is challenging he owes $138 million in back taxes and penalties, his lawyer Simon Judd says.

But the lawyer says the IRD’s pursuit for tax is wrong in law and that his client has never personally earned a cent from the tax arrangements at the heart of the decades-long legal stoush.

Russell continued his lengthy battle with the IRD with an appeal that began yesterday in the High Court at Auckland against the huge tax assessment.

Russell is challenging an Income Tax Statement of Account for tax and penalties for the years 1985 to 2000 which the court was told had grown because of penalties and interest owed to a contested personal tax liability of $138m as of April this year.

Russell, now in his 70s and who retired more than a decade ago, did not appear as he is confined to hospital.

Since the late 1980s Russell has been involved in legal tussles with the IRD over various arrangements designed to reduce or avoid liability for income tax on companies he consulted to.

He formed Commercial Management Ltd in 1976-77 after Securitibank went under. He then consulted to dozens of companies which signed up to various forms of a scheme known as the “Russell template arrangements” which were meant to reduce their tax bills. There were three different partnerships involving six companies during the period in the tax assessment.

All of them were controlled by Russell but his lawyer Simon Judd said “the fact Russell was a director is irrelevant”
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