Skip to main content

Boxing Clever

Image
By
The recent rí rá about our boxers at the Olympics in Rio brought back memories to me of my own boxing career. I used to box for a club on the Shankill Road in Belfast. It was around the time Johnny Caldwell won a bronze medal at the 1956 summer Olympics in Australia. I was eight years of age and I still remember his homecoming on the back of a lorry down and around Cyprus Street and the other terraced streets of the Falls. He was one of our sporting heroes. It’s great to see his statue in the Dunville Park.
Freddie Gilroy from Ardoyne was another Belfast fighter who won a bronze medal at the Melbourne Olympics. Jim McCourt later won bronze at the Tokyo Olympics. If I remember rightly Jim lived at the bottom of Leeson Street. Or at least he had a little bicycle shop there. In the front room of his house.  I hope I’m right about that.  What is for certain is that Jim was rated as one of the best amateur boxers in the world. My achievements were much more modest.
Dominic Begley was a relation of ours. He was a handy boxer. So at the height of all the pugilistic excitement of the time Dominic took me the short walk up Conway Street to the Shankill Road.  I think the club was in the YMCA but maybe not. I know it was close to The Eagle Supper Saloon. I didn’t last very long. A few months or so.  I perfected the little hissing noise that boxers make when they are throwing or receiving punches and I was very good on the punch bag. The bit I never embraced was when I was put into the ring with some other wee buck who seemed to have a homicidal desire to knock my pan in.  I never quite managed the ability to let my opponents hit me. My instinct was to talk to them. That however seemed to compel rivals to hit me even harder and more often.
Poor Dominic Begley was distracted. So was I. Time and time again he would stop the fight.
‘Gerard,’ he would entreat me, ‘hit him back.  Stop talking to him. He is only seven. You’re nine. Don’t keep backing away. Hit him with a left, then a right and then a left again. And stop making that stupid hissing noise’.
So I did my best. My left, right, left combination became more polished and accomplished. So long as the punch bag didn’t strike back. Dominic persevered. He used to spar with me when no one else would. Eventually he gave up and returned me to my Granny.
‘I’m sorry Aunt Maggie but now that he is wearing glasses I don’t think the boxing will suit him’.
I was glad and Dominic was kind. My Granny seemed to be glad also.
‘Well at least no one will be able to pick on him’. she said.
Little did I know how true that was to be. Almost.
Actually as it turned out no would be able to pick on my older brother Paddy.  Not when Paddy could say ‘Do that again and I’ll get our Gerry for you’.
I remember the day it started. A big boy from across our street hit him one day when we were playing a game of Rounders. Our Paddy was small for his age and he started crying. I challenged his assailant. He told me to mouth away off. Before either of us knew it I hit him. Not just once. No.
All my months sparring with Dominic Begley paid off. I hit the bigger lad with a left then a right and as his knees buckled and his nose spouted blood I finished him off with another left. He was amazed. So was I. And I never hissed once.
My next street fight was also our Paddy’s fault. One of the Dunnes stole his kitten. I was sent out to get it back. Again my winning combination had the desired effect. The cat napper collapsed on Glenalina Road as I caught him with a left, then a right and another left.
Then I made a mistake. I picked up the kitten, turned my back and started to walk back to where our Paddy waited for his pet. That’s when I got hit on the back of the head with a half brick. An Ardoyne upper cut.
Later when I got out of hospital I was distraught to find out that our Paddy gave his kitten away. For fourteen marleys, a kali sucker and two gub stoppers. To the brick thrower who did the Judas on me. Michael Conlan’s outburst was muted compared to my outrage.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

There can be no preconditions

By
Blog January 21st 10 Apparently the DUP were sitting up at Stormont Castle on Thursday waiting for the Shinners to come and talk to them. Strange. This Blog had told Peter Robinson late the evening before that that phase of our discussions was over. I told him there would be a Sinn Féin national officer board meeting on Thursday and a report from Martin McGuinness on the negotiations would be discussed. The failure of the DUP thus far to come up to the plate during the current round of negotiations shouldn’t come as any great surprise. The DUP are looking over their shoulder at Jim Allister and then there are the ‘secret’ talks between the UUs and the DUP and talk of electoral pacts. That’s their own business and nothing to get too excited about. Except to note they told us they couldn’t do any business on the Sabbath – the very day they were busy on unionist unity business. But lest we forget the DUP was born out of the anti civil rights politics of the late 60s and the firebrand unio...
57 comments
Read more

Remembering Bobby Sands.

By
In 1973 just before midnight on Christmas Eve, I was caught along with three other comrades attempting to escape from Long Kesh. We were among a large group of men and women interned without charge or trial. My first bout of internment was on the Maidstone Prison Ship in 1972. Internees-the British later called us detainees as part of their fiction that internment was ended – were held in Armagh Women’s Gaol, Belfast Prison, Magilligan, and Long Kesh. In July 1974 I was caught again in another escape bid. Steve McQueen I was not. The following March 1975 I was taken out to court where I was convicted on the first escape attempt and received an 18 month sentence. A month later I was convicted of the second escape attempt and got another three years. Then as the rest of the internees were being released a small group of us nearly got-aways were moved out of the internee end of Long Kesh to the top end of the camp where the sentenced POWs were held. We were incarcerated in Cage...
Post a Comment
Read more

Remembering Bobby and his comrades

By
Today marks the anniversary of the death of my friend and comrade Bobby Sands on the sixty sixth day of hunger strike. I don’t remember the first time I met Bobby. I had been interned in Long Kesh and was sentenced for trying to escape and found myself in Cage 11, in another part of the camp which held sentenced political prisoners. Bobby was already one of those in the Cage. The cages were literally that - a large space surrounded by a high wire fence in which there were four Nissan huts, a study hut and a toilet shower hut. In the sentenced end of Long Kesh these each held around 80 prisoners. In Cage 11 one of the Nissan huts was also a Gaeltacht for those wanting to learn the Irish language and that’s were Bobby was. I remember him as a keen sportsman who played soccer or gaelic football whenever he got the chance. He had long hair, a good sense of humour and liked music. He was very good on the guitar. I remember sitting in the study hut writing while he would be practic...
Post a Comment
Read more