Ireland’s boxers prove a knockout success
More palatably, there was John Joe Nevin springing gleefully into the ringside arms of his coach, having qualified for next summer’s Olympics with a countback verdict over Mongolian spellcheck buster Otgondalai Dorjnyambuu.
It was only the beginning for John Joe in a week that led to bronze, while former Kilkenny minor hurler Darren O’Neill and Belfast teenager Michael Conlan also joined the Mullingar man in punching their tickets to the London docklands.
And it felt good, as always, to peer inside the dreams of people we could believe in. For some time now, any week when Ireland’s impressive young boxers represent us is a week when our international reputation is dusted off and hosed down. The stink lifts with every jab.
These are weeks when the country is associated with excellence, best practice, courage and tremendous dignity in victory or defeat. When powerhouses like the Russians and Cubans glance over their shoulders and nations like the USA and England nod at us as equals.
Ireland emerged from the Olympic qualification portion of these World Boxing Championships ranked joint ninth in a competition where boxers from 127 countries competed. Like ourselves, 20 other nations sent a full compliment of 10 fighters.
The target, said coach Billy Walsh, was three qualifiers and one medal and that job got done. But even the lows presented themselves like small triumphs.
Moate light-heavyweight Joe Ward, having suffered the first real setback of his young life when an Iranian shocked him in a controversial bout, parsed his disappointment with maturity far beyond his 17 years. It would have been easy and natural to focus on curious judging, but Joe preferred to chastise himself.
“It’s devastating. I wasn’t stepping back, counter punching. I don’t know what happened, what came over me.”
At that point, you knew a dead end had opened into a learning curve. He’ll make it to London yet.
We can be proud of them all; Paddy Barnes, the champ who had a bad day; Con Sheehan, the Tippman who got the nightmare draw; Roy Sheahan from Athy, who produced two thrilling performances.
As Walsh put it: “they don’t get any fanfare, they don’t get any great rewards financially but they love representing their country and they leave everything out there.”
And isn’t it time that fanfare grew a little louder, that we hired a brass section to back up the kazoo we invariably honour these fellas with? Compared, for example, to the hullabaloo around our rugby players this morning, it often feels like our boxers have packed just their own hopes and dreams when they travel away — at least until Olympic time, when we hastily assemble a bandwagon for the gold rush.
Boxing remains discretely tucked away in the Other Sports menu of our web sites and RTÉ turned up desperately late to the Baku party, leaving fans to scratch around the web for coverage before the quarter-finals.
Sure, the sport can be a hard sell. The whiff of corruption hasn’t helped, nor the impenetrable scoring system.
The latter has improved for these championships, registering more punches and rewarding attacking styles.
Alas, the new calculation methods have robbed the sport of the live scoring element, leaving spectators in the dark until the end of each round; sapping some of the drama.
But, in truth, if we haven’t been sold by the heroics of John Joe Nevin this week, we’ll never be converts to this noble game.
After his bronze medal bout with Orzubek Shaymov of Uzbekistan, there was none of the nonsense we often hear post-game; about savage hunger and fierce hurt. This was a technical, composed revival.
“One round at a time, one punch at a time. Don’t think who’s outside the ring, what’s going on, about medals.
“Just thing about that moment, what you can do. It’s just like a spar for me in there.”
That’s the achievement of Billy Walsh and the high performance programme, creating an environment where boxers can relax, trust their talent and reach their potential. Some day, their sport might become more than just another sport. It might be our sport.
FOR a few special moments on Tuesday afternoon, the sporting public — prompted by an excited fanfare on RTÉ News — joined together in merriment and celebration.
Finally, after 38 long years of annoying us with cheques and suggestions, Europe was set to make itself useful and let us watch Premier League football for a pittance.
We toasted them and enquired of Guenther Oettinger just how low on the pole he wanted the tricolour to fly. Until we realised the supposedly landmark judgement in the Karen Murphy pub case would have little practical effect on the way we consume football. In fact, the punter will invariably be the loser.
Remember when an EU Competition ruling forced the English Premier League to crack Sky’s monopoly and divide up its TV packages? Net result; the eager punter now needs subscriptions to Sky, ESPN and Setanta to cover all bases.
This time, it will cost us as much, if not more, to point our dishes towards the Greeks or Norwegians. More importantly, if the EPL fails to prevent pubs legally screening 3pm games, they may remove them from their international packages altogether.
And where will that leave the thousands of punters who rely on free, pirated internet streams from far-off places for their Saturday fix?
It’s the internet, rather than this old-fashioned sideshow, that poses the real threat to the EPL’s €3.6bn broadcast rights gravy train. Why install costly satellite equipment to avail of a loophole when the same product is easily available online? As recession bites everywhere and broadband speeds improve, free streams are increasingly becoming an alternative to subscriptions.
Turning off that tap, rather than worrying about Karen Murphy’s, will soon be the English game’s biggest challenge.
HEARTY congratulations must go to the GAA for retaining, for another year, its crown as the undisputed masters of PR minimisation.
It’s surely time we let them keep the trophy.
The cornerstone of the organisation’s dedicated campaign to deflect as much interest as possible in its games remains, of course, the proud tradition of opening its showpiece championships with as messy and low-key an oul game of football as they can organise.
In another walk of life, Christy Cooney would have led off the Joshua Tree with Trip Through Your Wires, just in case anyone got too excited about it.
But that comes later. The second building block in this careful strategy was rolled out, as usual, this week, when GAA HQ hosted the championship draws fully seven months before the games take place.
Could the prospect of a Dublin ambush for champions Kilkenny on a baking June Sunday in Croker ever seem more distant than it does on a grim Thursday night in dank October, with this year’s campaign still warm on the slab?
Far from whetting punters’ appetites, the GAA might as well ram a jar of suppressants down their throats.
STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN
Jonny Wilkinson (right): All class. Dealt beautifully with the growing cloud over his status as England’s first-choice kicker in agreeing to a private shootout with Toby Flood.
International Cricket Council: New rules prohibit runners for injured batsmen. After NFL last week, a sign another sport is getting serious with injury fakers.
Michael Hoey: That was a nerveless St Andrews finish from a player who has suffered from his fair share of self-doubt.
LaShawn Merritt: The overturning of his Olympic drugs ban might be good for his civil liberties, but should open the door to London for a host of athletes who carry the stain of drug-taking.
Martin Atkinson: Bad enough his fussy approach should try to sanitise the Merseyside derby, worse his crass error should skew it.
UEFA: Missing the point with its new ‘Football Week’. Six days of international qualifiers will capture nobody’s imagination while many are hopeless mismatches. Cull the minnows.
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