O’Neill is feeling the Mersey beat

DARREN O’NEILL can’t wait to don the gloves and get his European boxing championships campaign underway in Liverpool.

“It’s been a long wait what with injuries and different things,” the Paulstown southpaw said last evening as he settled in to Irish boxing team’s Merseyside base.

After his failed attempt to get a shot at Olympic qualification at middleweight where Darren Sutherland went on to take a bronze medal, he moved up to his more comfortable light heavyweight division and, in his last international appearance, beat the Olympic bronze medallist, Yerkebulan Shynaliyev of Kazakhstan en route to the gold medal at a multi-nations tournament in Turkey last June.

In fact he beat all of the medallists who made it to the podium in Beijing with the exception of his arch rival, Kenneth Egan.

He beat the Olympic champion Ziaoping Zhang, in Tampere and he beat Tony Jeffries of England in his very first international. He was replacing injured Darren Sutherland on the Irish team when he made it to the quarter finals of the European championships in Plovdiv two years ago.

“I would hope to go further than that and take a medal this time,” he said. “But obviously you need a decent draw and a bit of luck — you don’t want to be drawing the No 1 or the No 2 in the first couple of rounds.”

Head Coach, Billy Walsh, has pencilled O’Neill in as one of Ireland’s leading medal hopes in a team that also includes John Joe Joyce, one of the unluckiest boxers at the Olympic Games where he missed out on a medal on a count-back after a disputed public warning, and David Oliver Joyce, who missed out on Olympic selection but went on to claim a gold medal at the EU Championships.

“I would have to regard all three as medal prospects,” he said. “But all of the team are in good shape and, after a week sparring with England, France and Sweden in Sheffield.”

The weigh-in takes place this morning and the first ring session will take place this afternoon. The championships run until Saturday week when the finals will all be televised live by TG4.

Meanwhile, Bernard Dunne has been hit with a change of opponent ahead of his headline appearance on the Hunky Dorys Fight Night at the Breaffy House Resort, Castlebar, on November 15.

Dunne had been set to face Eduardo Garcia but the Mexican has been forced to pull out after suffering a bad cut in sparring.

Stepping in to replace Garcia is another world-rated contender in Cristian “El Terrible” Faccio. The Uruguayan is reigning WBC Latino bantamweight champion and ranked number 11 in the world while Dunne is listed at 24 at super bantamweight.