Decency in sport? Here's a winning team

There’s an old saying, a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil and it causes a tornado in New Mexico.  The   arrest of Pat Hickey in Brazil in relation to alleged ticket touting may not at first glance set the political storm chasers agog here in Ireland.  But hold on a minute, there’s 2 issues that we need to consider

1.      Shane Ross our sports minister seemed somewhat unperturbed 10 days ago when the first arrest of the THG agent occurred.  Ross built a reputation as being strong on corporate governance.  He travelled eventually for a showdown meeting to Rio with Hickey and was seen going in alone to meet late at night with Hickey. There didn’t seem to be many officials from his department close to hand.  By all accounts he had a bruising experience as his opponent tried to put him in his box.  The best he could do was to refer the matter to the same Attorney General that he sidelined a few weeks ago over abortion.

Ross has had a hard time coming to grips with his sports brief. By all means this was supposed to be the fun bit of his politics. It’s nothing of the sort. How he will respond to the growing controversy and how much support he receives from his cabinet colleagues may well determine how other issues in cabinet play out in the coming months.

2.      Hickey is in Brazil and faces questioning and possible charges.  But there are others named in warrants.  Some of those may be in this jurisdiction and Ireland may receive extradition requests.  An extradition warrant is only allowed if we have the same crime on our statute books. And here’s the rub.  Ticket touting is not illegal here.  So it’s unlikely an Irish court will extradite for ticket touting, while the charges of a cartel translate as a criminal gang? Well cartels here are dealt with under competition law.  Is competition law considered criminal? Well I’m no legal expert but it remains for a court to decide if a cartel is under Irish law a criminal conspiracy akin to gangland. 

And the reason why we need to move fast on this is looming pretty quick. Next year the decision on the location for the 2023 Rugby World Cup will be made. Ireland has a strong bid,  however the name of the company at the heart of the scandal THG has built its business about securing tickets for the corporate sector around events like the Rugby World Cup, FIFA World Cup and Olympic Games.  We need to legislate on ticket touting before the IRB decides where to go in 2023.

So if its real sport you want this week, go no further than Thurles and to be precise after the final whistle blew last Saturday evening. A young female Kilkenny fan enters on to the pitch at full time and puts a comforting hand on the shoulder of a distraught Pauric Mahoney, the player who moments previously had missed the chance to tie up the match.  There still are honourable and decent people in sport, somewhere! 

IABA leads with the chin

We don’t have too many living freemen of Wexford.  In the past some of those selected as freemen have been paper tigers when it came to their abilities.  In my time on Wexford Borough Council, we only selected one.  I think we picked well.  He’s Billy Walsh.

Billy represented Ireland in an Olympics in Korea.  His intense rivalry with Michael Carruth brought out the best in both men.  When Carruth won gold at the Barcelona Olympics he said that the toughest fight he’d had in the previous year was in the National Championship against Billy Walsh. The winner of that bout automatically became Ireland’s Olympic entrant at middleweight.

When he finished with boxing he built up a business in Wexford delivering milk.  He was our milkman when we moved to our house. While Billy never won gold, his personable and trusting nature built up relationships with boxers down through the years.  This made him a constant feature in the corner at many an international competition.  Walsh heads up the Irish Amateur Boxing Association High Performance Unit.  When Carruth won gold he had his father in his corner.  Walsh has been like a father to many of his team members.  He’s actually the Uncle of one Irish European bronze medallist, Dean Walsh.  You can’t hide in a boxing ring but if you have Billy Walsh in your corner you will go forward with confidence at what is thrown at you.

Billy is extremely loyal to his town.  He loves the county and in particular GAA.  He’s not driven by money but with someone who knows what it takes to achieve he expects his athletes give their best and in return he’ll do his best for them.

That’s the bit that the blazers who run amateur boxing out of the National Stadium on South Circular Road don’t quite get.   Clearly in the background he has been courted by other nations that admire what he has achieved with his boxers.  Boxing has delivered more Olympic medals for Ireland than any other sporting discipline since 1924.

Perhaps it may well be the case that somewhere in the IABA someone has made a calculation that Walsh was threatening to take some of their power and decisions away from the committee men resplendent in their green blazers with crested breast pockets.  So when he was negotiating a contract which was going to be underpinned by the state through the Irish Sports Council, the breaking point was not money (despite the reality that they haven’t provided for the 51 year old’s pension) but the right to take decisions about team membership.

In most other sports managers are entitled to pick their team members and manage them in the interest of the team.  Not so with boxing.  The Blazers don’t pay for Walsh but want to decide who he puts into the ring.  What about meritocracy?  Why shouldn’t the best box in a team and shouldn’t the manager decide who he will work with? If Walsh doesn’t pick the best would not any committee then be entitled to decide if he manages the team at all? That is what happens in every other sport. 

The IABA must have someone quite extraordinary lined up to take Walsh’s job forward to Rio. There is a whole lot riding on this for Irish sport as the Olympics is less than a year away.  If Billy Walsh, Freeman of Wexford can’t knock sense into the IABA, who can?