‘Box-off’ was not a tool to select squad

WHEN the high octane meeting of the IABA’s Boxing Council ended on Saturday at the National Stadium one was left wondering how the paranoia had been allowed to fester during the previous week’s tournament in Dublin.

IABA president Tommy Murphy insisted that the event was never intended to be a box-off for the world championships. All along we should just have called it by its proper name — The Un-Seeded Open Elite Championships.

It proved the calm after the storm as delegates emerged from the three-hour meeting which ratified nine of the 10 boxers put forward by High Performance chiefs for places on the Ireland team for next month’s world championships in Azerbaijan.