Hard work pays off for Irish
He was reflecting on the European Championships in Liverpool which produced three more medals to add to a spectacular year that saw Kenneth Egan (silver) and Darren Sutherland and Paddy Barnes (bronze) take medals from the Olympic Games in Beijing; four gold medals, a silver and a bronze from the EU Championships, four gold medals from the Olympic qualifying tournaments and a gold, a silver and two bronze medals from the World Youths Championships in Mexico.
“It has been a phenomenal year,” said O’Rourke, who is head coach at the St Michael’s Club in Athy where he coaches the likes of John Joe and David Oliver Joyce and Roy Sheahan.
“This a credit to all the boxers and to all the coaches. The coaches brought them up to that standard and then we polished them. The club coaches are often the forgotten heroes of this game and I keep driving that point home to the young boxers in particular — never forget your club and club coaches because that’s where it all begins.”
He singled out the medal haul at the World Youths Championships as very significant for Irish boxing as Ireland emerged as the fifth strongest of 68 nations involved.
“We put the four nations tournament in place some years ago and that has been a vital part of our development — where we had internationals at 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 as well junior and senior and that’s where all those boxers developed.
“We are reaping the benefits of that strategy because all those kids came through that programme,” he said.
“The fact we were winning medals at those tournaments was very important because all of the time you can see stars coming through the system.”
He said he did not think their Sports Council funding would be cut next year due to the success they are having and the value for money they have been providing.
“The success we have had has all been on a minimum budget as such,” he said.
“We are now planning to move to the provinces — putting schools of excellence in place in Munster, Connacht, Ulster and Leinster — where we can develop young boxers in their own areas. We’ll put pro coaches in place, paid staff and instead of having 20 boxers in Dublin we will have 80 boxers in the provinces and another 20 in Dublin so that we will have a conveyer belt of young boxers feeding from one system into the other.
“That will all improve boxing again. We have started the “A” team and we now have 25 to 30 boxers training in Dublin every weekend and that’s outside the elite boxers who train full time in the High Performance Unit.
“Our under-21 championships this year had 80 entries without the eight lads who were competing at the world youths championships in Mexico and that was never heard of before in Ireland. It was a tremendous championships.
“We have the intermediates next week and, again, we are going to have over 100 entries. If we can develop those lads and bring them into our senior championships next February we could have up to 200 boxers in the senior championships.
“High Performance has been a huge success for us. Six years ago people were sceptical — maybe it was because we had started paying people and the club coaches were a bit aggrieved and I can understand why but, we stuck to it and it is now working in the way I always envisaged it would — that we would have full-time boxers.
“The fact that we now have an education plan in place is also a major breakthrough.
“We are very lucky that we don’t have to go outside the country to find world class coaches. Our own coaches have vast experience. Billy (Walsh) and Zaur (Antia) and the coaching panel they developed are superb.
“I have always said we could qualify 11 boxers for the Olympic Games and I still believe we can do this.”
But he warned it is going to be very difficult for a boxer to get on the Irish team and keep a place.
“Everybody has to compete for their place on an Irish team. Our country should be the hardest to get out of — like Cuba where you lose your place if you don’t keep performing.”
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