Bernard Dunne: Irish Athletic Boxing Association’s new performance director

Bernard Dunne, the Irish Athletic Boxing Association’s high-performance director, is unperturbed about a supposed talent drain from Irish boxing. Instead, he insists a fresh team are already on course for great things, writes Brendan O’Brien.

BY the time John Hayes had called time on a 14-year career with Munster and Ireland, he could hardly bear looking at another tracksuit, let alone wearing one.

Bernard Dunne has never made the same sort of dramatic fashion statement; five years on the sideline with Jim Gavin’s Dublin footballers made that impossible. But the tracksuit is a uniform he won’t touch now that he is high-performance director with the Irish Athletic Boxing Association (IABA).