Jim steps into the ring to lead our Olympic boxers - By DEIRDRE McGRATH
COUNTY Limerick's Jim Walsh has been appointed team manager designate for the Irish Olympic boxing team for the Beijing Games in 2008. Mr Walsh, who recently moved from Bruree to Castletown, has been involved in boxing for 40 years.
He said he was over the moon with the appointment. Mr Walsh's role as team manager means that he will co-ordinate the team and ensure that the boxers' training needs and requests are catered for in the lead-up to the Games. Mr Walsh is well known in provincial and national boxing circles and has run boxing clubs in Bruree and Kilmallock. Members of his clubs have had many successes at national level over the year, including Tommy Cronin from Kilmallock, who won a national title five years ago. He has served in various official capacities within amateur and is current president of the Limerick County Board and secretary of the Munster Council Irish Amateur Boxing Association. He first became involved in the sport when he went to London in the 1970s. When he returned to Ireland he joined St John's Boxing Club in Limerick and set up a club in Bruree in the late Seventies. "There was mighty interest in it. It was a great club and all the boys won various Munster championships. We had to go when the De Valera Museum was set up and we had no place to train for a while," said Mr Walsh, a builder by profession and who is currently working on Croom Church. He then set up a club in the Parochial Hall in Charleville and was president of the Cork County Board in the late Eighties. The club eventually moved to the People's Hall in Kilmallock where it became the Abbey Boxing Club and where it has remained ever since. Mr Walsh teaches his charges to respect the sport and their opponents. "It is very important that they have respect for each other. It is a wonderful sport. Boxers have to be both mentally and physically prepared. When they step up to the ropes they have to be mentally prepared. I advise them on the rights and wrongs of the sport and how far they are prepared to push themselves. In the high performance bracket they have advisors and nutritionists," said Mr Walsh. As part on his new appointment, Mr Walsh will attend meetings with the Olympic Council of Ireland and will need to travel in Europe and further afield to attend major championships. "We believe we have five good prospects of qualification for the Olympics, we are 100 per cent that we have three from Dublin, Kilkenny and Kildare," said Mr Walsh. "We are in the most difficult qualifying group because we will be up against the breakaway Eastern European nations such as Ukraine," he said. Mr Walsh said that he as team manager will be seeking sponsorship for the Irish team in the near future and will be contacting businesses. Among those who paid tribute to Mr Walsh was Anna Moore, secretary of the Limerick County Board and treasurer of St Francis' Club in Limerick. "It is a great honour, especially for Jim. We all lost a very good friend this year, John Mahon, who was president of the Munster Council of IABA and was murdered in Fermoy," said Ms Moore. "Jim is a stalwart of boxing. He is known in Munster and all over Ireland and is respected by everyone from the president of the IABA to young children," said Ms Moore. She said that Mr Walsh was a tremendous help to all new clubs who needed contacts, guidance and advice and he was extremely helpful when St Francis' Club was reforming.
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Thursday 20 June 2013
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