Irish boxers advance to semis

THREE more Irish boxers advanced to today’s semi-finals after another action packed evening of boxing at the multi-nations tournament in Ballybunion last night.

A third member of the Joyce family, David Anthony, won his light welterweight contest by beating Mark Hastie of Scotland convincingly 26-17.

The Athy man tied the first round 6-6 but from there on dominated the fight winning the net round 10-7 and the third 10-4 to join his relations and clubmates, David Oliver Joyce and John Joe Joyce in today’s semi-finals which will be decided over two sessions - the first commencing at 2 pm and the second at 7.30pm.

Oisin Kelly from Portlaoise had 11 points to spare over Funda Mhura of Scotland in his welterweight contest which he won 23-12. Stepping up in class, he was always in control and picked his man off with some accurate shots to the head and body.

Darren O’Neill, understudy to Kenneth Egan at light heavyweight, rounded off the evening with a very impressive victory over James Whitfield of Wales.

After a very good first round he was never going to be denied victory. He scored with some good combinations to the head and body and fully merited the 34-9 score in his favour.

The other Irish boxer in action, middleweight Edward Healy, lost to Harry Mills of Wales 29-32 after a contest that was always close and could have gone either way.

The second light welterweight contest on the programme went to Mikchael Starbala of Poland who beat Gennady Kovalev of Russia 22-8 while David Arastomegan of Russia claimed his place in the welterweight semi-finals with a second round victory over Piotr Alujniczak of Poland, the referee stopping the contest on the 20-point rule.

In a second middleweight contest Alexev Shcherbakov of Russia outpointed Halis Baran of Germany 41-16 and in a second light heavyweight contest Kenny Anderson of Scotland hammered out a very impressive victory over Mariusz Welc of Poland, 29-13 to claim his place in tonight’s semi-finals.

Ireland will just have one heavyweight in those semi-finals after the reigning national champion at the weight, Ian Timms, failed to make it.

This will leave Michael Fouhy from the St Colman’s club in Shanagarry to carry the hopes of the home fans in this division.

It will be a first international outing for the Castlelyons man who began his boxing career in the USA four years ago when working in Chicago.