obvious defence is self-defence, which is not likely to appeal to a jury when the accused was armed and the victim not. You have to destroy the victim's credit, as well as showing him to be a bully. It is not enough to elicit in cross-examination that the victim was looking for trouble. In any event he will probably deny it. You have to be more devious. It depends on the man, but it may be that having watched the victim give evidence, you are quite convinced he will never admit going into the public house to find the accused and beat him up, however much circumstances suggest that he did. So you do not waste time seeking admissions; you put the bald accusation, “When you went out with your mates that evening, was it your intention to beat up the accused?”. His answer is, “No ”. So you have manoeuvred him into telling a lie. An advantage, provided the facts allow you to exploit it. With luck they do. Your next question is (say), “So when you went into the Pig and Whistle, you had no idea that he was there?”; again the answer is, “No”; it must be: having started on a dishonest path it is a very exceptional witness who doesn't continue. You go on to establish that the victim had never been there before, but he knew the accused went every Saturday, and the fight was on a Saturday; and so on, eliciting all the circumstances which suggest the first answer was a lie, and even a ridiculous lie. This is not a far-fetched illustration; and the point is that however carefully you lay your plans, you depend on professional instinct to tell you which admissions a witness will refuse to make. This moulds the form your questioning takes; and it all depends on your initial assessment of character.
If you put the first two questions the other way round, he would probably reply that he had known he might meet the accused in the public house, but he had nevertheless had no intention of doing him any harm. This answer is worse than useless to the defence. Because the first part of the answer is true, the jury may well accept the second part as true too. Of course the trouble about…