Holy Trinity sparring partners Sean Duffy and Bernaldo Marime could be on a Commonwealth Games collision course after being named in the Northern Ireland and Mozambique panels at 64kg. As Glasgow draws ever closer, Andy Watters talks to Duffy about his second coming in the sport...
THE Holylands or the Holy Trinity gym? Freshers' week or the school of hard knocks? It's a tough call and many a youngster chooses the party, but Sean Duffy went for the punch-up and, two years on, he's preparing for his first Commonwealth Games at senior level.
Duffy was a silver medallist at the Junior Commonwealth Games in India five years ago. He lost the final to England's Danny Phillips but a bright future in the sport looked there for the taking until his career was derailed by bad news that Sean Doran, his coach at Keady ABC in county Armagh, had passed away.
Doran's death rocked Duffy, then aged 18, and he quit boxing as a result. Though he occasionally pulled his gloves on, he didn't train with any discipline - there was no gameplan, no purpose in his work. "I packed it in for three years after that. Well, I kept it on and off without training, I was just entering the odd fight but I was very rarely fighting. "When Sean died it took the heart out of me to train, I didn't feel that I had it in me to train at the time so I dropped out of boxing."
He could easily have been lost to the sport but the achievements of some of his team-mates at this year's Games inspired him to return.
Sitting at home watching Northern Ireland's boxers win medal after medal in India four years ago struck a chord with him and slowly the idea of making a return to boxing grew in his mind. "I saw the success and I was thinking to myself 'it would be brilliant to be there, I'd love to be there'," he said. "A couple of years ago I just decided to give it a good go again and try and make something of it."
And so he ended up at Holy Trinity. He had planned a week-long jolly with his mates but a visit to the Belfast club led to an invitation to train, then spar, then join. "I trained a wee bit in Keady, but there was no sparring available - it's only a small, wee club," he said. "I happened to go down to Belfast with a group of mates for freshers' week. A couple of friends are in college and I went down for a week's drinking basically. "I had a decision to make whether I wanted to go on the drink for a week or to go and see what the club was like - I started training and I never went on the drink at all. It was a hard decision to make! "I called over to the Holy Trinity club because Mickey Hawkins was the coach when I was in India for the Junior Commonwealth Games. "I did a wee bit of training and Mickey told me the Cubans were coming over to do their preparation for the Olympics if I wanted to come down to do a bit of sparring with them. "I went down and from that he asked me would I be interested in joining the club and from then I've been boxing for Holy Trinity."
Since he returned to the sport he has recovered fitness and sharpness under the watchful eye of Mickey Hawkins and his brother Harry. "It was strange [going back] whenever I went in for the first couple of nights it was Harry [Hawkins] who took me under his wing - probably because of my style of boxing and Harry's background in the pro game," he said. "He has been very good to me since." Harry may have good to him, but he couldn't save him from the rights-of-passage beatings he took early on at Holy Trinity as he battled to get back to where he had left off three years before. "Every fight I have I feel like I'm learning," he said. "In my head I'm playing catch-up from where I left off. When I left off, I know I was only a junior, but I was at the highest level as a junior. "It was a hard road getting back into it and you can see the difference from taking them couple of years out. "Because I was going into such a good club to spar it was the skill side of it too - I took a lot of beatings. Every night I was taking a beating just to try and get myself back up to where I was at. "I was taking them off everyone - they were lining up in the club to get into the ring and give me a good clipping, I was the punchbag for them. I suppose I was the stranger and everyone wants to get a good dig at the new kid."
Luckily, he wasn't put off by the sore ribs and black eyes that became almost routine early on.
He will be among the favourites in the light-welterweight category, but Scotland's Josh Taylor, has been tipped as the man to beat. "Training has been going very good," he said. "We're tapering down now but we've had plenty of sparring and I'm feeling in good fitness and I'm ready to get on the boat and get going. "I've sparred him [Taylor] and he's a very good boxer," he said. "He'll be one of the favourites - not because he's from the home country, because he's a very good boxer. "I sparred him there last week and there was very little in it, so it should be an interesting fight if that one comes about."
If he beats Taylor he likely to be in the shake-up for a medal. But he's travelling to Glasgow with no pressure on his shoulders. "I've no worries about what way I feel about the fights," he said. "I'm not worried at all, the way I look at it is the from the point of view of where I was four years ago and where I am now. I have nothing to lose. "We've been working a lot on keeping focussed in the camp. The style of boxing now - you've only got a short space of time to do a lot of work so you need to be switched on from the first bell."
DUFFY on Marime
" I'VE done a lot of sparring with Bernaldo over the last couple of months and he's a good tough kid. He's one of those fighters that whatever you throw at him, he'll stand in front of you, he's not going to back down too handy. We've both been training hard and being in the same gym helps. We know each other well, but it's all down to on the day