ya Clarke is a good fighter, unfortunetly he doesn't get the opportunity with Joshua and joyce being ahead of him now and in the past. ya Ireland never really focus on this its a bit low level, Kenny egan won gold at the last one and was our number 2, beat guys who went onto the Olympics. I think this is going to be Irelands strongest Olympic squad ever, we have already qualified 4(should be 5 but was a robbery) and the talent is unreal
49kg - Paddy Barnes (Q)
52kg - Brendan Irvine (a cert to qualify, id say 90% chance he qualifies
56kg - Michael Conlon (Q)
60kg - David Oliver Joyce/Sean McComb (both top class id say a 70-80% chance to qualify)
64kg - Ray moylette/Dean Walsh ( good fighters id say 60% chance to qualify)
69kg - Steven Donnelly (Q)
75kg - Micahel O'Reilly (should have already qualified, class act 100% chance he qualifies)
81kg - Joe Ward (Q)
91kg - Darren O'Neill (great performances against tishchenko and the Ukrainian and a lot of Europeans have already qualified so 60% chance)
91kg+ - Dean Gardiner ( slim chance imo 5-10%)
I think Ireland should be aiming for 7 to qualify at least, 9 would be unbelievable
When was Kenny Egan #2? In 2012? Hell he was No 1 for many years including Beijing when he got robbed for the Olympic gold. I know he went through some problems after Beijing. Back in '00 he came to Baltimore to a show I put together that was supposed to be the Holy Family club vs Baltimore except Gerry Storey brought an Irish all star team with only a few of the boxers from Belfast. Egan was a middleweight then. Good dude. I hope things are going better for him now. Both Ireland and team GB have really done a nice job with their national boxing programs. So good the US had to steal one of your coaches Billy Walsh.
Ya Egan is actually in politics noe and works for a tv station so his doing good. Unfortunetly for him in 2011 he ran into a 17 year old bulldozer named joe ward. In the 2012 and 2013 finals Egan took savage beatings off ward. IMO ward would have won gold in London if he wasn't robbed out of his qualification place, he beat mekhontsev easily when he was only 17
I think it's a shame Billy is training the woman, surely the men's team could do with him? You would know better than me
I also think america coukd finally break the medal duck in Rio, vargas looks quality
I think Ireland should be aiming for 7 to qualify at least, 9 would be unbelievable
When was Kenny Egan #2? In 2012? Hell he was No 1 for many years including Beijing when he got robbed for the Olympic gold. I know he went through some problems after Beijing. Back in '00 he came to Baltimore to a show I put together that was supposed to be the Holy Family club vs Baltimore except Gerry Storey brought an Irish all star team with only a few of the boxers from Belfast. Egan was a middleweight then. Good dude. I hope things are going better for him now. Both Ireland and team GB have really done a nice job with their national boxing programs. So good the US had to steal one of your coaches Billy Walsh.
Ya Egan is actually in politics noe and works for a tv station so his doing good. Unfortunetly for him in 2011 he ran into a 17 year old bulldozer named joe ward. In the 2012 and 2013 finals Egan took savage beatings off ward. IMO ward would have won gold in London if he wasn't robbed out of his qualification place, he beat mekhontsev easily when he was only 17
I think it's a shame Billy is training the woman, surely the men's team could do with him? You would know better than me
I also think america coukd finally break the medal duck in Rio, vargas looks quality
The US Olympic committee has it ass backwards in that they reward successful teams and not the ones that don't win medals. So a sport with athletes that mostly come from well to do backgrounds like swimming who wins lots of medals, gets lots of more money pumped into it and a sport like boxing that is on hard times recently gets nothing. Now our women boxers did get medals, gold and bronze in 2 out of 3 weight classes so they are getting lots of money. They train with alongside the men's team and the men see them getting funding while they get nothing. Billy is being paid from the USOC to coach the women but not the men. I am sure he will help out where he can and I hope USA Boxing picks his brain to find out what Ireland did to become successful but who knows, they keep fecking everything up. Vargas is quality but he has to make the Olympic team first and he has some tough competition in Brent Venegas.
JMac wrote:
When was Kenny Egan #2? In 2012? Hell he was No 1 for many years including Beijing when he got robbed for the Olympic gold. I know he went through some problems after Beijing. Back in '00 he came to Baltimore to a show I put together that was supposed to be the Holy Family club vs Baltimore except Gerry Storey brought an Irish all star team with only a few of the boxers from Belfast. Egan was a middleweight then. Good dude. I hope things are going better for him now. Both Ireland and team GB have really done a nice job with their national boxing programs. So good the US had to steal one of your coaches Billy Walsh.
Ya Egan is actually in politics noe and works for a tv station so his doing good. Unfortunetly for him in 2011 he ran into a 17 year old bulldozer named joe ward. In the 2012 and 2013 finals Egan took savage beatings off ward. IMO ward would have won gold in London if he wasn't robbed out of his qualification place, he beat mekhontsev easily when he was only 17
I think it's a shame Billy is training the woman, surely the men's team could do with him? You would know better than me
I also think america coukd finally break the medal duck in Rio, vargas looks quality
The US Olympic committee has it ass backwards in that they reward successful teams and not the ones that don't win medals. So a sport with athletes that mostly come from well to do backgrounds like swimming who wins lots of medals, gets lots of more money pumped into it and a sport like boxing that is on hard times recently gets nothing. Now our women boxers did get medals, gold and bronze in 2 out of 3 weight classes so they are getting lots of money. They train with alongside the men's team and the men see them getting funding while they get nothing. Billy is being paid from the USOC to coach the women but not the men. I am sure he will help out where he can and I hope USA Boxing picks his brain to find out what Ireland did to become successful but who knows, they keep fecking everything up. Vargas is quality but he has to make the Olympic team first and he has some tough competition in Brent Venegas.
Damn that sucks. The reason that ireland had an improvement in fortune is the development of the high performance squad where our top boxers got good training and into a proper schedule rather than just having all the national champions training on there own and just going to tournaments with no structure .
The thing with ireland is we always have serious undrage talent but it fell away due to having no structure in place. Now that the structure in place the talent is flowing through and going from strength to strength . Ireland are two deep in almost every division and have underase standouts coming through on top of that
Id say the men's team should try and get some help off Walsh too the guy knows how to run a squad
