IRISH BOXING HIGH Performance Director Bernard Dunne is mystified by the lack of coverage given to World Championships silver medalist Joe Ward, after the Moate light-heavyweight became the first male Irish boxer ever to reach two Worlds finals.
Ward’s third consecutive podium finish at amateur boxing’s non-Olympic showpiece, which came just 10 weeks after he won his third straight European Championships gold, lifted Ireland to a ninth-place finish in the medal standings.
To add further context to Dunne’s first Worlds at the High Performance helm, Ireland finished ahead of Britain, whose £13.8m investment in boxing between London 2012 and Rio 2016 more than quadrupled Ireland’s over the same period.
There was, however, disappointment for Ireland’s other medal hopes, for some of whom this was a first taste of amateur boxing’s most arduous tournament.
“Okay, we only came home with the one medal,” Dunne said of his team, “but Sean McComb came up against the best or second best guy in the whole tournament. His Cuban opponent was just incredible.
“We would have had high hopes for Sean going out and the draw just wasn’t kind to us. If you meet anybody else you move on and quite possibly could have got a medal.
“Brendan Irvine, he’s 21 years of age… A lot of pressure after the Olympics. Got caught with a clean punch and it changed the whole fight. Kurt [Walker] got put on his ass in the first round and for the next two I thought boxed fantastically well. I thought it was a great performance to come back from what had just happened to him.
“I thought big Deano [Gardiner] was very unlucky. We could be sitting here talking about him being a medalist as well. And then Joe [Ward]. They all performed very well, and it’s a great platform for us to build on going forward.”
The former super-bantamweight added: “When I first came in and spoke to the team, I told them that this year and next year is all about building blocks. It’s all about 2019, 2020. I think they have bought into that, so while there was disappointment they understand that this is just about learning and growing.”
As for Ireland’s sole medalist and team captain, Dunne offers a slight shake of his head while providing his case as to why Joe Ward should be a household name amongst the people for whom he fights.
“Three European gold medals, three world medals,” he says. “All on the senior stage by the age of 23. The whole country should know his name, he is that good.”
Dunne offers “a couple of reasons” as to why the three-time European champion is yet to garner such prominence in his homeland.
Joe is quiet. He probably doesn’t get enough TV exposure in terms of his fights. He’s just come back from fighting in a world final and I don’t think any of our home TV stations even bothered broadcasting any seconds, never mind minutes, of it. We had one TV camera turn up at the airport to see him.
There’s an incredulity to Dunne’s words, an intensity to their delivery. “Boxing is our number one sport,” he says with a shrug of his shoulders, referring of course to Ireland’s sweet scientific success on a global scale rather than pugilism’s popularity in this country, which tends to fluctuate based on proximity to the Olympics.
“C’mere, it’s always been that way,” says Dunne. “Let’s not make it that it’s something to do with reputation. It’s always been that way.
But Joe doesn’t make a song and dance about not getting the attention that he does deserve. And he does deserve it, he deserves everybody to know who he is. He’s a superb athlete, probably the best athlete we have in the country at the moment. Actually, I’m doing him an injustice: he is the best athlete we have in the country at the moment.
“He’s the most consistent. There’s only one guy above him in the weight division, and Joe is closing that gap all the time. And his goal over the next three years is to really close that up.”
The one guy above him happens to be Julio César La Cruz, a bona fide all-time amateur boxing great, and a four-time world champion as of his close but unanimous victory over Ward in Hamburg on Saturday – his third triumph over the Westmeath man in as many World Championships.
Ward got closer to La Cruz in their most recent showdown than he did in either 2013 or 2015, landing a number of telling blows where in the past his fists were finding little but fresh air. He lost fair and square, but certainly wasn’t outclassed to the same extent as his schoolings at the hands of the Cuban in Almaty and Doha respectively.
Fabulous effort against an opponent who has dominated the division. We're getting closer and closer #Tokyo2020 #TeamIreland 🇮🇪 pic.twitter.com/qLMZltEXMk
— Bernard Dunne (@Bernard_Dunne) September 2, 2017
“Cruz is getting older… And so is Joe,” Dunne adds with a laugh, “but Joe is only 23 and Cruz is 29 [28].
“Cruz is probably at that level where he’ll stay, while Joe is just getting better and better.
“I’ve noticed a real difference in him since I’ve come in, in terms of his own focus and how he applies himself.
“He demonstrated to me how much he wants it and wants to improve, and for us to be able to secure him for the next three years is a huge coup for Irish sport.”
As for the whispers that Cuba’s first ever Olympic light-heavyweight champion might move up a division – 10kg, no less – to heavwyeight (91kg), which would clear a path for Ward to rule the roost, Dunne said he’d heard nothing of the sort, and indeed indicated that he hoped it would not be the case.
“Come here, let’s not cross a line here and say that we want that. Joe wants to beat Cruz, that’s the target: beating Cruz and winning the Olympic gold medal.
“That’s the goal.”
The Clondalkin native was then asked if there was anything he and his captain could learn from the build-up to Conor McGregor’s professional boxing debut versus Floyd Mayweather, and the media attention it garnered in Ireland and elsewhere.
“Joe’s not going to act and be something that he’s not,” Dunne responded. “If you guys were interested in talking to him, Joe has no problem talking to anybody.
“I’ve openly told you guys that we’re open to welcoming you in to see the guys training-wise, and to having open days.
“You guys have to show the interest. Just because it’s not what Conor and Floyd were, which was very, very different to normal boxing…. It was extravagant.
“There was only one winner in that,” he added, “and it was Conor. And I thought he did a superb job, regardless of what happened in the fight, the man just talked himself into the biggest fight in history for his first ever professional fight.
“I don’t know anybody else who could do it.
But Joe Ward is the real deal. Sean McComb is the real deal. Kellie Harrington is the real deal. Grainne Walsh is the real deal. These are real boxers, real people with Olympic ambitions. That’s not Conor.
Of course, when the UFC lightweight champion was embarking upon his MMA journey in the late 2000s, Dunne himself was a transcendent figure in Irish sport – the last boxer to have attained such a status, and the first since Steve Collins almost 15 years prior.
“Yeah,” he says, “but I had the support of RTÉ, I had the support of all you lads. I was open to working with you and I’m trying to do that with my team here, to be open to the media and let them see what it is we’re trying to do – we’re trying to be the best team in the world.
“We’re ninth right now. Let’s build on that.
“We’ve a female team that’s just going to get stronger and stronger. We’ve just won an EU gold medal, an EU silver medal and an EU bronze medal.
“They’re going to grow, we have young female boxers coming through who are as good as anything I’ve seen, male or female, at an underage level. We have some pre-elites, male and female, ready to just jump on to the international stage.
“So for me, even before I came in I did my due diligence and looked at the hand that we had and the structures that were in place and the support staff that was there, and I knew it was a huge opportunity because… I won’t say Irish boxing was a sleeping giant, but it probably wasn’t utilising everything that it should have been utilising.
“I’m hoping to really awaken that and push it in the way it should be getting pushed.
We finished ninth in the world at the recent championships. Our female team finished fourth in Europe. Our male team finished fourth in Europe. So we’re not a million miles off. We’ve got a young team coming through. We’ve had a big transition from Rio. There has been change since I have come into the programme, and some new faces. It will take a bit of time for it to settle down.
Dunne adds that he’s probably “12-18 months away” from having everything he wants in place so that his fighters can be “ready to rock for the start of 2019,” which will entail another men’s Europeans, another men’s Worlds, and an EU Championships for the women as Tokyo 2020 approaches.
One such change he wishes to implement is on-campus accommodation for his boxers, who currently commute to Abbotstown from the Louis Fitzgerald Hotel on the Naas Road – if it’s not booked out, that is.
“I’ve probably two priorities right now and one is accommodation on-site,” he says.
I think we are pissing against the wind if we don’t have accommodation on-site. It is completely counter-productive to be living in a hotel. We need to be on-site. Our athletes need a proper facility to be resting in. They can’t be resting here on-site or they can’t be resting in the gym or resting in a hotel and travelling back and forth.
“So really my challenge going forward is to raise the funds that we can have better accommodation. There are facilities here that I’ve been talking to Sport Ireland about developing. There is huge potential there but in the end it just comes down to funding and being able to fund that project. So that is one of my key priorities going forward.
“Then it’s the female programme,” he adds, “bringing it right alongside the male programme. They are going to bring the females up to five weight divisions in the Olympics. There is huge potential for return on investment if you go into that programme. If you look at the females that we have in place, the young girls coming through, I just think a lot of what we are trying to do here is common sense. It just needs to be looked at in the right way.”
Dunne acknowledges that he’s learned a lot about elite-level sport from Dublin football manager Jim Gavin, with whose players he’ll continue to work so long as it doesn’t interfere with his top priority: boxing.
“Very much so. I know what good looks like. I also know what great looks like. Right now we are building towards that. It is a fresh start for everybody right now. For our coaches, my supports staff and my boxers – male and female. There is no history with me.”
As to why Dublin have become the juggernaut we’ll see take to the field in their fourth All-Ireland final in five years on 17 September, Dunne pauses, before posing a simplistic explanation: “They enjoy their football.”
“When you enjoy what you do,” he says, “you do what it takes to be the best you can be. Whether that’s from a boxing point of view or whether that’s getting up in the morning and going for a run before doing weights, and then coming back and doing a boxing session. Enjoying that system and process means you are going to do whatever it takes to be the best.”
Having been in the dugout for the Dubs’ quarter-final victory over Monaghan, Dunne missed the semi versus Tyrone while in Hamburg with his Irish boxing team. He trained with the All-Ireland champions on Monday night, and will return for the final – a rematch of 2016′s two-legger with Mayo. Dunne says he isn’t surprised to see the champions so unwilling to loosen their grip on Sam.
“No, winners have that hunger to continue, to keep winning. Winning is the best feeling there is. When you get a taste of it, you want to keep tasting it.
“I just help out any way that I can,” he adds of his own backroom role. “Just to see them being successful is incredible. It’s great to be on the inside and be able to witness it firsthand.
“Boxing is my priority. Once it doesn’t interfere with my priority, I’ll help. Jim and the team are very much aware of that. This [boxing] is my job. I love doing both.”
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