Sutherland commences bid for first senior title
The St Saviours man will contest the semi-finals for the third time in his career. His previous appearances resulted in losses to John Duddy, now a successful pro in the US, and Andy Lee, scheduled to have his first professional fight in Detroit in a month's time.
Since then, Sutherland took time out to pursue his studies at DCU but returned last year and quickly found himself filling the middleweight spot on the High Performance squad which had been vacated by Lee.
He won gold medals at the four nations championships and multi nations tournaments in Russia and Albania before going to the world championships in China where he advanced to the quarter-finals, losing to the gold medallist. Now he is back pursuing his original aim - a national senior title - and he is the favourite to succeed.
The other semi-final, to be decided on Saturday, involves big punching Disha Gezim (St Matthews) and Edward Healy (Portlaoise).
David Oliver Joyce (St Michael's, Athy) launches his defence of the bantamweight title against Derek Thorpe (St Aidan's, Ferns), last year's flyweight champion who is stepping up a division.
Another taking the step up is David Joyce (St Michael's, Athy). The light welterweight champion moves up to welter against TJ Hamill (All Saints) and makes way at light welter for his clubmate John Joe Joyce.
There will be an interesting encounter at heavyweight, where Alan Reynolds (St Joseph's, Sligo) returns to the national scene. He crossed the Border to box the Ulster championships and may deprive Cathal McMonagle (Holy Trinity) of his place in the Commonwealth Games team unless McMonagle, the super heavyweight champion last year, can do something special on Saturday night. Defending heavyweight champion Ian Timms is in action tomorrow night against Shane Curran (Holy Trinity).
Tom Murray (Rylane) was boxing at heavyweight when he lost to John Sweeney (Dungloe) in the semi-finals of the intermediate championships 12 months ago. He is back down to light heavyweight and meets Darren O'Neill (Paulstown) in what should be an interesting southpaw battle.
O'Neill lost 27-7 to Kenneth Egan in the senior final last year and, not surprisingly, Egan has not been opposed on the other side of the draw.
