THERE was a great weekend of boxing in Naples as a 10-strong County Antrim team went toe-to-toe with their Italian counterparts.
The first show took place in Mondragone on Sunday, with the Italians storming to an early lead, winning 6-3 with Kane Bacon, James Rooney and Jude Molyneaux notching wins for County Antrim.
Sunday’s action unfolded in Caserta, with County Antrim needing a big night of boxing to pull back the score. Amazingly, they dug deep and smashed their way to a 5-0 lead on the night courtesy of some big performances.
The overall score on night two was 6-3 to Antrim leaving the overall dual match score an impressive 9-9 draw on foreign soil. Wins on the second night came from Oscar Brown, Kane Bacon, Corey Connors, Bryan Ward, James Rooney and Jude Molyneaux.
That brings County Antrim’s domestic season to an end, with 11 teams on international duty, home and away, across a season that saw a total of 96 boxers, 24 coaches and 11 R&Js gain international experience in Spain, Italy, Denmark, England, Wales, Cyprus and Scotland.
The County Antrim board will host its yearly AGM in Corpus Christi Boxing Club at 7pm, with all clubs encouraged to attend.
County Antrim team: Oscar Brown (Star), James Rooney (Immaculata), Kane Bacon (Saints), Bryan Ward (Banbridge), Cory Connors (Saints), Cormac Fegan (Holy Trinity), Sean Gray (Clonard), Oscar Mallon (St Agnes’), Jude Molyneaux (Holy Trinity) and Oisin Dunlop (Kronk). Coaches: Jimmy McGrath (St Agnes’), Paddy Mullan (Star), Michael Hawkins jr (Holy Trinity). R&J: JP Turley (McCullagh’s). Team manager: Chris McCrory (Saints)
Elsewhere, an Ulster High Performance team came home with a slew of medals from the prestigious Golden Belts tournament in Romania.
Topping the podium were Star’s reigning Ulster light-flyweight champion Louis Rooney - who will seek to add the Irish U22 crown to his collection next month – as well as Clepson dos Santos and Donagh Keary.
Holy Trinity’s Dos Santos, who competed at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, landed flyweight gold, with Rathfriland pocket rocket Keary doing the business at 57kg.
Returning with bronze medals were 2022 European elite silver medallist Caitlin Fryers, Antrim BC’s Nicole Clyde – a Commonwealth Games team-mate of Dos Santos – and Illies GG light-middle Matthew McCole.
The Ulster HP team finished in second place behind the Italian Olympic squad.
Meanwhile, the national boxing federations of Barbados, Dominica, Peru and Singapore have joined World Boxing – set up last year as a rival to the controversial International Boxing Association (IBA).
Following the addition of India last month, that brings the total number of federations aligned with World Boxing to 33, although Ireland is not one of them.
Indeed, World Boxing has made a significant step in its bid to secure boxing’s Olympic future by organising its first World Championship of any kind – the U19s, which will take place in Colorado in October/November.
With the International Olympic Committee (IOC) having already banished the IBA, and insisted it does not intend organising the boxing tournament at Los Angeles 2028 – as has been the case at Tokyo 2020 and the upcoming Paris Games – World Boxing hopes to prove that it can assume governance of the sport on a global scale.
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Six Ulster boxers came up trumps at the Irish junior cadet championships recently, with Banbridge BC’s Isaac Ireland, St John Bosco’s Ruairi Walker (both pictured), Kayla Harris (St Monica’s), Connor Lowry (East Down), Rylee Finn (St Nicholas’) and Roisin Hegarty (Illies GG) all taking national titles up the road. Ireland beat Pat Stokes on a 3-2 split in the 36kg final, Walker forced a second round stoppage of Callum O’Brien, Harris beat Dealgan’s Lily Reel on a split, Lowry proved too strong for Eddie McBride, Finn was a unanimous decision winner over Michael Patrick Nevin and Hegarty got the better of Olivia Farrell, 3-2. All are now in the mix for the Irish squad that will travel to the European cadet championships in Bosnia in August
