Intrepid Traveller at a crossroads

BOXING:SAME SMILE. Same old caffler. It has been a dozen years perhaps since you saw him or even thought of him, says Tom Humphries. Francis Barrett carried the flag for us at the Atlanta Games. Remember?

A Traveller holding aloft our green, white, and gold on that sultry night in Georgia. In the cockpit of deep south racism Francis purged us of our own sin.

Pound for pound one of the great Irish stories. A fairytale. He reached the Games training in an old metal lock-up he turned into a gym. No electricity or running water. We were charmed rather than shamed.

Francis carried that flag and we felt good about ourselves and forgave ourselves plenty that night .

Whatever it was that we felt at that moment, though, soon got lost in the blurry times that followed. The inquisition of Michelle Smith. The disintegration of Sonia O'Sullivan. And then the plunge like mad things into the heedless era of big time prosperity and easy money. We didn't take Francis with us.

He won his first bout in Atlanta by a huge margin, lost narrowly in his second. We watched him in Liam McGrath's wonderful, touching documentary Southpaw and reassured ourselves we understood.

Then we moved on.

Now he is back. Time has smoothed and rounded those chiselled aspects of his boxer's body but not taken away the sunny disposition or the lively mind. He tried life as a prize fighter and the story of that career had a familiar turn; lots of fights in places he shouldn't have been; small crowds in draughty halls and Francis facing lean, hungry fighters, both men knowing in those desperate flurries of violence that neither of them would be going home with more than a couple of grand each for their pain and their two months of hard training and denial.

There were no lucrative nights in front of beery Irish-Americans and just one night here at home. There were no nights of shamrocks and leprechauns and fighting Irishry where he might have made some of the money we were all throwing around.

So here he is a dozen years on. As well off, he says, as he was before he went to Atlanta.

You'll recall, as you listen to him tell his tale, what an easy story Francis Barrett's was to fall in love with.

From the start it was a romance. Twenty years ago now the local barber, Chick Gillen, started a boxing club. Chick, a lovely old charmer with matinee-idol charisma, had read the rules of the Olympic Games and Chick loved the notion of an event which took no notice of your class, your creed or your colour. So he christened his club the Olympic Boxing Club.

One day Chick told little Francis about the Olympic Games.

"Would Travellers be let in?" asked Francis. "It's everybody," said Chick, "sure that's what it is all about. Creed, class, Traveller, it doesn't matter a damn, once you box and win."

There was something beautiful and touching about Francis emerging from the cocoon of Chick's club and Chick's care and landing at those same Olympic Games, honouring us by carrying the flag, always honouring Chick with his kind words and loyalty. We forgot quickly that Chick's club was ostracised and derided for holding the door open for Travellers. We took no notice later when Francis was told that because he was a Traveller he couldn't come into a nightclub in Galway to a party he had been invited to. Francis had a quick, high wattage smile and an easy manner and we felt we were forgiven everything. End of story.

A dozen years on, his life is as much a crossroads as it was when he came from Atlanta. The world hasn't showered him with gifts. Francis (it's still mainly settled Dublin people who insist on calling him Francie) trains four days a week, wrestling with the extra stone and a half that clings lovingly to his frame. He is 32 in February and something has gotta give.

After a long struggle to be allowed stay, the Barrett family still live on Hillside, just outside Galway city. The buildings which prosperity brought have taken away the views of the sea they once enjoyed but they don't complain, never have.

Last month Francis was in Birmingham. He met up with his old friend Ricky Hatton. The two men have a high regard for each other since that evening back in 1995 when they fought in Derry in an amateur bout and Francis won over the three rounds. Mickey Glackin was running the fight and Francis got his bus fare to travel up from Galway and put on a decent show. Hatton lamented afterwards that Francis was a year older. Francis pointed out Ricky had been carrying about half a stone more than he himself had. They laugh about it now.

Because of his generous nature, of course, Francis just looks at Ricky Hatton and sees the man being rewarded with what the boy's talent had promised him. Right now Ricky is getting ready to fight Paulie Malignaggi at the MGM Grand in Vegas on November 22nd for the world light welterweight title. Francis is doing security work and coaching nights in the Olympic Boxing Club, which thrives still.

"Ricky is a gentleman," he says. "He was always a good lad. Everything that came to him he deserved."

And everything that came to Francis? He went pro long ago when he failed to make it to the Sydney Olympics. He tried his hand first with Frank Warren and then with Mick Hennessy. He fought in places like Wembley and Bethnal Green and then places like Wembley and Bethnal Green again. He waited for the blue touchpaper of his career to take hold for the pop of a flashbulb or the glint of a belt but all he got was graft and hard fights.

From time to time he'd speak up and say that, well, back home in Ireland he had a name, he was the Traveller who carried the flag in the Olympics, he was the kid from Southpaw. The stares would come back blank and uncomprehending. He just wanted them to know that, sold right, he could draw a crowd, make a little money for getting hit and staying lean.

He was more than decent and could have contended, he felt. Nobody ever took him and puffed him up above his talent, feeding him a lucrative diet of tomato-can opponents until he was ready. He worked the hard pro circuit. He won the Southern Area light-welter belt by beating Jon Honney and he beat Gavin Down for the EU light-welter title. He defended that belt one night against Alan Bosworth.

"We went out in the first round. I was moving, moving and he hit me with a big right hook. I went down and got back up and whispered in his ears. 'Okay, if it's a fight you want it's a fight you have'."

So they went 10 rounds. When the call came the referee lifted Francis Barrett's arm. That was in Wembley. He sold 1,500 tickets for that fight. Nobody saw the potential.

'Let's see what happens if you fight Junior Witter for the full European title', they said.

'Okay', said Francis.

A pro career came on top of his real career. Hard graft. He might have carried the flag and we might have forgiven ourselves but most of his life since has been spent in the company of a shovel. That time when he fought Bosworth. Most of the other bouts. He was working. Keeping a family.

"I was working. I would go running at 4.30, then go to my day's work. Go to the the boxing club at 5.30." Working didn't involve a swivel chair and chats over the water cooler. He was working for a subbie tied to British Telecom. Cable needed laying. Boxes needed raising. Holes needed digging. A van would take them to New Cross or Ponders End or Peckham, some place where the world was still stretching and waking and, because it was London and built up, every hole was dug by hand. He would train again in the evenings, hitting the gym. Nobody knew that in between his run and his gym he was on the end of a shovel, in a hole, wearing a vest and grinding out the dirt come sun, rain or hale.

'Let's see what happens if you fight Junior Witter'.

He never complained. Not his nature.

"If I was 42 years of age and still on the shovel I wouldn't be really pushed about it. I wouldn't be ashamed. It's kind of enjoyable work. In 10 years I would love to have a business set up. Hopefully in 10 years' time we will be right, myself and the family. If we're not, I'm not afraid to work hard and harder."

He sees no failure in accepting hard work while others get easy money. You do what you do to feed your kids. He has four now, one cuter than the next.

"After a while on the end of a shovel your mind closes down and you get a bit fed up, but a little break and you come back into the rhythm of pure hard work and it's not so bad."

The fights ended for him three and a half years ago. A nightclub in Leicester Square. A place called The Equinox. A promotion by some geezer called Joe Pyle. Francis got into a ring against a Russian called Ivor Bonavic and in the second round he took a haymaker and with it shipped a bad cut in a clash of heads. A cut above his eye opened like the Grand Canyon. The referee gaped in horror and waved the fight off. That was it. Francis had his fill too.

As an amateur he fought and fought and nothing could open his skin. Now twice it had betrayed him. A couple of years earlier in Dagenham the guy he had been billed to fight pulled out, so did the replacement and he ended up fighting a no-mark journeyman called Silence Saheed, a Nigerian out of Canning Town. By the time the fight took place Francis barely had any enthusiasm left for it. He got into the ring and got knocked down. Got up and there was a great 14 stitches worth of gash above his eye. End of bout.

Saheed went on to a career of unremitting mediocrity but could be found a couple of years later fighting on the bill in The Point in Dublin. One of those big nights Francis never got to be part of.

"I thought I could have been managed better," says Francis now. "I would always say to Frank Warren or to Mick Hennessy, 'get me some fights in Ireland and I'll show you a crowd. More fights in Ireland or a fight in America'. I could have been bigger. It was all Junior Witter though. Getting ready to fight Junior Witter."

So when Bonavic opened that cut it ended. He worked the roads and came home to the kids in the evening and did what young men do. He put away his dreams. They packed up in England and came home to Galway. Life stretched ahead. No mixed feelings about home either.

His heart is here. This may be the place where he got stabbed and cut for refusing to fight bare-knuckle. It may be where he was refused admission to certain establishments after carrying our flag, but Francis keeps on keeping on. It's where he and his father were stabbed again and again for refusing to fight bare-knuckle. The thick scar behind Francis' left ear is testimony to that grim story. It is this place he was reared in.

It is home and he loves it.

Home. He forgives everything and moves on. A decent man never went to hell, Jack Doyle used to say.

Almost to prove the point he made to Frank Warren and Mick Hennessy since he came home for good, life has opened up again for Francis.

His uncle John told him one day a fella had been on looking for his number. One thing led to another. One call followed another. One face introduced another. Next thing Frank knows, he is down to play Pakie in a movie called Blood, Sweat and Wars.

Stephen Kenny wrote the thing and thought of Francis for a part.

Life opens up new chapters all the time.

Francis knows more than most that life is a journey and never a destination. He moves with the opportunity.

"Listen, my plan was to win a world title and to make a lot of money and the family would have their future assured. That didn't come true and I said, 'sure listen, once you have your health that's the main thing'. When I came back home, though, a fella called Patsy Dodd, who was living up in Westside, had been asking my uncle John about me and now there's a movie and we're starting shooting in February.

So Francis was asked if he might act in a movie. He said yes and, brimming again with optimism about the world, he decided to keep training anyway and see where that took him. Training four days a week.

Hitting the roads for runs. Trying to get the weight down. If it gets down to 11 stone, maybe he'll box. If not, sure no harm done. Meanwhile lights, cameras and action await.

"I'm down as a fella called Pakie. I'm wheeling and dealing and acting the lad. I'm a blackguard and a messer.

"I'm supposed to be one of the Longs or the Burkes, I can't remember which, but I'm looking forward to it. It'll be out in the cinema in a year's time and will go to the festivals in America."

And this last while he has been thinking if he could get the bit of space a film and perhaps a book would give him he would get back into the ring. He knows, before you say it, thanks, he is 32 soon, but if hard work has been your friend all of your life, it's no punishment to climb back between the ropes.

He looked at what is going down in the rings before big crowds in Ireland these past few years. "There's not much out there. Irish people love their fights too. There's good money to be made, I'd say, so I've trained away, four days a week, and I'm thinking about it."

So he works long evenings on the pads with the boys in the Olympic Club. Seventy rounds sometimes, just letting the lads come at him punching those pads. Chick no longer haunts the place but in his stead and with equal love and generosity, John Mongan and Francis blow life into the Olympic club which thrives now in a bustling home on Westside.

It's been a long and mainly a hard road from the humble beginnings of the club back in Bohermore or from Francis's own days in his makeshift gym to the idea of mixing with the cineastes in the festivals in America, but Chick still whispers guidance into his ear.

This spring Chick cut his last head of hair in the old shop in Dominick Street after 60 years of barbering and chatting. He is still a father figure and a fount of advice. Every second weekend through the years in England Francis would ring Chick for a chat and advice and they yarn and chat as innocently as they had done from the day when Francis, still knee high, asked Chick earnestly what a knacker was.

Chick knows movies, of course. He stole the show in Southpaw and when John Wayne was making the The Quiet Man it was Chick who cut the Duke's hair one day when he bellied in.

Chick and Francis, two dreamers leaning against the wind, cutting against the grain. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza . . .

John Wayne! The old cowboy knew how it works. The lights are up for the second act in the theatre of Francis Barrett's life. The second act is where things happen before resolution.

And rolling . . .