Fighting Irish can handle Olympic pressure

The opening ceremony at the Rio Games is still over two weeks away but the 2016 Olympics got very real for the boxing and hockey squads who formed a sizable Team Ireland vanguard flying out to South America yesterday.

The squads presented two very different sides of the same coin.

Though both dressed in standout green livery, the boxers boarded Lufthansa flight 981 accompanied by a heavy weight of expectation given medal hauls in Beijing and Athens. It will be Craig Fulton’s hockey team looking to punch above its weight.