IT would have brought a smile to Hugh Russell’s face that, when Gerry Storey answered the phone on Monday, his old coach was in the middle of conducting an early morning session at Immaculata.
“Hold on a wee second,” he says hurriedly, before orders are given, “go ahead, just back and forward. Stay off the heel now…”
At 87, Storey remains a force of nature on the Irish boxing scene, his protégés marvel at how the love affair with boxing is still going strong over 70 years on. But days like these are getting harder to digest.
Last year Storey bid farewell to Sammy Vernon, who he had known since his teenage years, and on Friday Holy Family lost another favourite with the untimely passing of Olympic bronze medallist Hugh Russell.
“Ah for goodness sake, I can’t believe it… what a shock. What a shock.
“We’ve lost some great fighters, and some great fellas, through the years, but I was nowhere near ready for that one.
“I don’t know if I’m coming or going. That’s the God’s honest truth…”
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Storey’s voice tails off as his mind immediately flicks back through the decades to when Russell first popped his head into the gym as a scrawny seven-year-old, the toothy grin and mop of red curls not instantly marking him out as champion material.
Of course, he shouldn’t have been there at all. Not allowed to box until 11, Storey would have been well within his rights to tell the young man to come back in a few years – except he didn’t know he was being spun a yarn.
“He told me lies for about three years,” Storey chuckles, “he was going on for 11 all that time.
“He was three stone, seven pounds at the start, we’d weigh him in but every time the championships came around, he would develop flu – because he knew then we’d find out his real age and he wouldn’t be allowed to box.
“But then when he eventually was 11 - he was still under four stone - he won the County Antrims, the Ulsters, the All-Irelands, best boxer award from 11-17… and that was his first championships. He won them all.”
While he wasn’t allowed to compete in those early years, Russell didn’t just go down to the club for somewhere to go. He would stand outside the ropes and watch what all the others were doing, making mental notes. When Storey spoke, he listened.
It was all money in the bank for when the gloves could finally be laced up.
“You can spot somebody like that – it’s like one in a million, where they just have something extra at that age. He just got the game from A to Z.
“When we had been coaching the other ones, he was watching all along and was able to do it. He’d have been doing things the 15, 16, 17-year-olds were doing – things our international fighters would’ve been doing.
“It’s okay having the skills, but you have to know how to use them, and Hugh was a great listener. If you had a plan and you worked it out with him, you wanted him to try a couple of different things in the ring, he could do it.
“He could use the ropes, slipping and sliding, use his skills to make a fool out of whoever he was in with. The speed he had on his feet, the balance was always perfect from no age. He made it look easy.”
Over time, the pair developed a relationship that went far beyond that of boxer-trainer.
The fondness with which one spoke of the other was always a joy to behold, time spent in their company together a pleasure as memories were relived once more.
For Storey, it is a wound that may never heal.
“It’s just heartbreaking.
“At the show they had in the Falls Park [on August 4], I was there with Fearghus [Quinn], we were in the dressing room. Next thing Hugh came in, I didn’t realise but the rest of our ones all edged out. He was standing, chatting away, next thing was he says ‘I’ll be back in a minute’, and he left.
“He couldn’t tell me that he wasn’t well… he went out again. I didn’t catch on but when he went out he said to Gerry jr I can’t tell him, he was filling up. I hadn’t a clue... it’s very hard to take in.
“We went to the Commonwealths in Canada, the Olympics in Moscow, people forget we had a club side that went out to Las Vegas where Hugh boxed a really good American called Richie Sandoval – and beat him.
“From then until now, he was always the same character, that same wee personality - a happy-go-lucky kid all the time, a funny kid. That was just Hugh.”
