Keegan has high praise for Egan and his team of stars

GARY KEEGAN, the High Performance director, has been on the outside looking in for the past two weeks in Beijing but, last night, he was back where he belongs, among his boxers with their Olympic medals.

The astute Dubliner who has headed up the programme for the past five years, did not have the necessary accreditation to be with the boxers at the Olympic Games, but he was never far away and yesterday he was high up in Tier 3 to watch Kenneth Egan fight the light heavyweight final.

“I was interviewed before the fight and they were asking me what I thought Kenny’s chances were and I thought he had enough to beat the guy, but I said there were probably two factors – and they were Chinese back yard and Chinese crowd,” he said.