Welsh cloud darkens Irish boxing horizon

NOT much more than a year ago hopes were high that the wrangling within the Irish Amateur Boxing Association was about to come to an end. After a number of resignations from the board of trustees of the association and also from officers of the hoard, a small group of activists seemed to have gained control.

By a certain osmosis the long-serving president, Felix Jones, was ousted and people like Joe Kirwan, and Martin Power from Dublin, Nicky White from Wexford and Harry Doherty from Belfast were in effective control of the complex affairs of the association and set about unravelling the situation to their satisfaction.

Their task was not an easy one but progress was being reported and light was seen at the end of the tunnel.

Then rifts began to appear in the administration of boxing in Scotland and Wales, two of Ireland's staunchest boxing allies. Sadly the situation in Wales is now threatening the stability of the Irish association by a roundabout route.

It happened like this. A club called St Jude's from Wexford, the home club of Nicky White, the IABA president, decided that they wanted to travel to meet Maesteg Welsh Club. Maesteg is one of several clubs in Wales which has split - from the official Welsh boxing body, the Welsh Amateur Boxing Association (WABA).

Things might have gone unnoticed if it were not for the fact that three days before the Maesteg-St Jude's tournament an official Irish international team travelled to Swansea to meet the WABA team. White went to Swansea to attend that international match in his official capacity. He has a number of relatives in the Maesteg region of Wales and, following the international, visited them in a private capacity and eventually attended the club boxing tournament and was acknowledged there as the president of the IABA.

Now the WABA have threatened to report their Irish counterparts, or may already have done so, to the European and World Boxing Authorities, claiming that White's attendance at the Maesteg' tournament was an official recognition of the breakaway Welsh clubs and that Ireland should therefore be censured and punished.

More importantly, the gaffe, if it can be called that, by White has been seen in some elements within the IABA itself as a serious breach of protocol and one which requires his resignation. The upshot of all of this is that the treasurer of the association, Martin Power, resigned at a meeting of the standing committee of the IABA last Saturday. Power said that in these circumstances he could no longer - act as treasurer with the present president.

That in itself would be serious enough but it now seems that further resignations are in the pipeline. The secretary, Joe Kirwan, has already indicated his willingness to resign in solidarity with his long-time friend, Power.

After the standing committee meeting of the IABA, it was clear that there was a growing mood within the committee that White be asked to resign. In addition approaches were made to at least one prominent member of the committee to take over the presidency in an attempt to defuse the situation.

In the interim, moves are afoot to pursue this course, but White says that he has been approached and pleaded with by many influential IABA members not to resign and to stick to his guns.

So it turns out that, as many felt the corner had been turned towards a bright new dawn for Irish boxing, a cloud of Welsh origin has come down to darken the horizon. It seems that if White does not resign, others will.