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- Herausgeber: Liberties Press
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
In the 1950s and 1960s, boxers John Caldwell and Freddie Gilroy reached the very pinnacle of their sport and brought immense pride to Belfast and Ireland. This is their story of friendship and rivalry, of glory and pain, of riches and poverty. Belfast is world-renowned for her glovemen. Best of Enemies explores the careers of two of the city's finest exponents of the noble art of boxing. As friends, they won Olympic medals for Ireland. As professionals, they quickly became bitter adversaries. Their rivalry peaked when Caldwell claimed a share of the world bantamweight crown in a fight that had been promised to Gilroy. Thereafter, the Belfast fighters were on a collision course. The two finally met in a bloody battle in Belfast's King's Hall on Saturday, 20 October 1962. However, that brutal night did not resolve the question of who was the better boxer, which lingers to this day.
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PRAISE FOR BARRY FLYNN
‘Flynn knows how to tell a good story.’ —The Evening Herald
‘This book is a must for all fight fans, young and old alike.’ —Belfast Telegraph
‘Flynn’s love for the game shines out, and few authors could have dug deeper into boxing’s archives.’ —Jack Magowan, Belfast Telegraph
BEST OF ENEMIES
Barry Flynn
To Katrina, Meabh and Deirbhile. And to John and to Freddie. Forever young!
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would wish to thank Freddie and Bernie Gilroy and the Caldwell family for their assistance in writing this book, particularly Paul and Bridie Caldwell. Teddy Gilroy’s scrapbook on his brother was a true joy to behold, and I thank him for letting me access it. I would mention also John’s daughters, Patricia Burns and Berna McStravick, for their recollections of their late father. Jim McCourt and Harry Enright were most helpful with their memories of the Immaculata boxing club. To Eamon McAuley, Hugh Jordan, Brian Madden, Liam McBrinn, Jimmy Donnelly and Davy Larmour, I would record my sincere thanks. I would also like to thank my father, Anthony Flynn, for his guidance. Finally, I would pay tribute to the staff of Liberties Press for their help and advice in the writing of this book.
PROLOGUE
A Solitary Man
It is a typically dark and wet Belfast Friday night in November 2005. Alone at the bar in the Fruithill bowling club in Andersonstown stands the solitary figure of John Caldwell. Gaunt and oblivious to his surroundings, John, amid the litter of spent cigarettes, ignores the bar’s satellite television as some meaningless American boxing match is played out on it. Staring at his half-empty glass, the former world champion raises his eyebrows as the barman sets him up another pint of Guinness; he nods his thanks in the direction of the man who has stood him the drink. The television blares on; John Caldwell is a lonely man who has lost interest in many things in life – especially boxing.
Soon, a man in his late thirties passes by and stops with purpose. Ordering a round, the man looks up at the fight on the big screen and then at Caldwell, saying, ‘My money would be on you, Johnny. My money would still be on you, wee man!’ John, fighting back his irritation, lifts his head in acknowledgement and then stares back at the bar. The man pays for his round and leaves to return to his company; John now has another pint paid for in the tap. John Caldwell is ill, but the people of Belfast will never forget a legend.
The Man in the Big Picture
On a fine spring day in 1962 in Belfast’s Lower North Street, Mrs Kitty Neeson from Ballymena enters Bannon’s furniture shop accompanied by her ten-year-old boxing-mad son. Her young boy’s hero, Freddie Gilroy, works in the shop and for fresh-faced Liam Neeson it is a dream come true. Mrs Neeson makes a polite request for Freddie to pose with her son in the street for a photograph. As usual, the boxer is happy to oblige. Neeson, dressed in short trousers and an Aran jumper, stands proudly with his hero as his mother takes the snap. Liam Neeson is as pleased as punch, having shaken the hand of an Irish boxing legend.
Forty-eight years later, in the ornate surroundings of the Belfast City Hall, the two men meet up to recreate that famous photograph. The press love the story and are out in force. Asked how he feels on being reunited with his childhood hero, Neeson responds, ‘I’m still shaking.’ Gilroy tells the journalists that he is delighted to recreate the photograph with the Hollywood star. ‘He’s the man in the big picture now,’ he says. With the famous picture recreated, Freddie Gilroy returns to his humble Belfast home, while Liam Neeson returns to New York. Among Neeson’s prized personal possessions is a pair of Gilroy’s boxing gloves.
INTRODUCTION
Belfast is an unforgiving place. Built on the Bog Meadows, for centuries it has fought against geographical adversity to survive. Its people are survivors too. It is a friendly city, though, blessed with humour and kindness. It is also a city renowned, sadly, for fighting. All too often, the peace of the city has been shattered by unskilled and unregulated violence. However, when fighting is regulated in the form of boxing, Belfast can produce men of a class and level of skill that make them a match for anyone in the world. This is a tale of boxing in Belfast, of two men whose undoubted flair and ability put the city at the top of the sporting world for a time. That period was too short, but while the glory lasted both John Caldwell and Freddie Gilroy shone ever so brightly at the very pinnacle of an unforgiving sport.
Caldwell and Gilroy brought international greatness to Ireland and Belfast as both amateur and professional boxers. They were two exceptional exponents of the noble art who boxed their way to greatness the hard way. They were truly world-class. In an era of real legends, they were right up there with the very best. Between 1959 and 1962, both were listed consistently in the top ten of the world rankings. Boxing today is littered, perhaps, with questionable world champions and world championships – these two men were the proverbial ‘real deal’ in international terms.
For all the glory, this, however, is a tale laced also with tears, anguish and despair. The root cause of the unhappy side of their careers lay purely at the door of money. For every pound they earned as professionals, there were managers, trainers, seconds, hangers-on and greedy promoters all awaiting payment. Especially greedy promoters. What the two boxers were left with after deductions was a pale reflection of the solitude, sweat and tears they put into their sport. That is, sadly, the all-too-familiar story of professional boxing.
In October 1960, Gilroy was unlucky to lose to Alphonse Halimi for the European version of the world bantamweight title. After that defeat, Gilroy had been promised a rematch. Promoter Jack Solomons and Caldwell’s manager, Sam Docherty, however, sensing a succession of lucrative paydays, choose to match Caldwell – then a flyweight – with Halimi. Despite the protests of the Gilroy camp, Caldwell took the crown in his first outing as a bantamweight. In the week prior to Caldwell’s triumph, Gilroy had tasted disaster when he travelled to Brussels and lost a European title fight to Pierre Cossemyns. As Caldwell stood on top of the world, Gilroy’s career lay in tatters. Hindsight tells us that perhaps it could have been the other way round.
In January 1962, Caldwell journeyed to Brazil to meet the legendary Éder Jofre, for the right to be named the undisputed world bantamweight champion. He was well beaten on the night and his chance of immortality was gone forever. Looking back, it could be argued that by 1962 Caldwell and Gilroy had peaked as boxers and there was nothing left for them to do, except to fight each other. That inevitable battle was a truly brutal affair; like two attack dogs sprung from their leashes, they gave each other nine rounds of hate at Belfast’s King’s Hall on Saturday, 20 October 1962. Gilroy won when Caldwell was forced to retire with a cut eye. That raw, spiteful fight satisfied the innate and animalistic hunger of the fifteen thousand in attendance. It most certainly satisfied – in financial terms – the joint promoters of the bout, Jack Solomons and George Cornell. The blood-fest of the King’s Hall was an affront to boxing and should never have happened. In rivalry, John and Freddie’s friendship was finished utterly.
A lucrative rematch proved to be too much for Freddie Gilroy. His weight problems became insurmountable. In reality, he was sick and tired of boxing. With a hefty fine issued at Solomons’s behest, Gilroy left boxing in November 1963 a very bitter man. Caldwell’s career limped on until 1965 when, with a damaged nose and suspect eyes, he bid goodbye to the sport. The two Belfast men had been chewed up and spat out by the sport they had loved. They had been salmon swimming in a sea infested with hungry sharks.
Retirement was not good for Caldwell and Gilroy. Both men had their demons to contend with and adjusting to normality was difficult for them. Gilroy invested his earnings in the Tivoli Bar in Donaghadee, but in 1972 the pub was to become yet another statistic in Northern Ireland’s sectarian hate-fest. He moved to Australia, but four years later arrived back in Ireland looking for work. For Caldwell, life was harder. Working to make ends meet, he and his family emigrated to Canada. As he recalled, ‘For six weeks, I wandered the streets looking for a job. Then I got the offer of one – clearing up sewage. That was the last straw. For the first time in my life, I felt unwanted; like a leper in a strange land. I just packed up and flew home.’ As the two men hit middle age, more problems haunted them: the bottle, and relationship difficulties. The roars of Wembley Arena and the King’s Hall were just ghostly memories as reality struck home. It was sad to watch.
This book is a tribute to John and Freddie. It is a reminder of the good times and the struggles they endured to carve their names indelibly into the history of Irish boxing. It is a salutary lesson too on the unforgiving world of professional boxing. John Caldwell and Freddie Gilroy were easy prey in the dog-eat-dog world of paid fighting. For all the agony and courage they displayed throughout their careers, they were left with just pain. Others made fortunes from the blood and tears they shed on the road to the very top. Where did all the money they generated end up? Well, that’s another story altogether.
1.
FROM LITTLE ACORNS
It took Mrs May Gilroy a long time to settle in Ardoyne. Hailing from the Catholic enclave of the Short Strand in east Belfast, migrating to 47 Northwick Drive on the north side of the River Lagan came as a severe jolt to her system.
The Gilroy family had established its roots in shared accommodation at 83 Seaforde Street in east Belfast. In the decade prior to Freddie Gilroy’s birth on 7 March 1936, the Short Strand area had been at the epicentre of a vicious sectarian war that had coincided with the partition of Ireland. As normality returned, May and Frederick Gilroy were married in St Matthew’s Catholic Church and soon three children joined them: Teddy, Freddie and Emily. Work was scarce in Belfast at the time and Freddie senior was forced to seek out a living in Manchester. Life was hard for the Gilroy family, who lived in a single room and struggled when the money Freddie senior sent home from Manchester became scarce, as it sometimes did. In 1941, the Gilroy family reached the top of the corporation’s waiting list, and a house in the newly built Glenard extension of Ardoyne was considered too good an opportunity to miss.
Northwick Drive was four miles from ‘home’ for May Gilroy, who could not settle in to her new surroundings. For two years after the move, the Gilroy children walked daily with their mother on an eight-mile roundtrip to east Belfast to see their relatives. Not surprisingly, fitness came naturally to the Gilroy clan. Eventually the homesickness abated for May Gilroy, and young Freddie settled in at the local Holy Cross Boys’ School on the Crumlin Road. It was there that the future boxing legend would learn the reality of life in Belfast. While known as a conscientious pupil, on leaving the school in 1947 he was told by his teacher Mr Higginson that he ‘would amount to nothing and would be no good to anyone’. Nine years later, Mr Higginson apologised personally to Freddie before he embarked on his trip to the Olympic Games in Melbourne. It was a humble gesture by the teacher – but a bitter lesson for Freddie.
For many boys in the locality, the boxing club was an escape from their humdrum existence. Street fighting was a way of life and, at nine years of age, a button-nosed Freddie Gilroy, fed up with his inability to acquit himself in street fisticuffs, found his way to the St John Bosco boxing club in Donegall Street. It was there that his glittering career began. Father John McSparran was the inspiration behind the Bosco club. He promoted the sport as a means of keeping kids off the street during the austere war years. Situated in an attic of a grain warehouse, the Bosco was in no way salubrious. It cost two shillings to join, while the weekly dues were nine pence for working men, and four pence for schoolboys.
Trainer Jimmy McAree was a gentleman from the old school of boxing. As an amateur, he had won the Ulster senior flyweight title in 1939, representing the Red Triangle club, which had been established by the YMCA for local unemployed men. Noted for his speed and impeccable left hand, he had sparred from an early age with notable professionals such as Jim Kelly, Jackie Quinn and Peter Kane, the future world champion. Although he was destined, it seemed, for the very top as both an amateur and a professional, McAree’s career was cut short when he injured an eye in a work accident. Undeterred, he became the head trainer at the Bosco club during the war and oversaw the careers of such notables as Teddy Fields, Leo McGuigan and Sean McCafferty – all of whom would emulate McAree by claiming the provincial flyweight title.
For many years, Jimmy McAree assisted clubmate Jackie McHugh in the corner of British champion Billy ‘Spider’ Kelly. Jimmy was devoted to boxing and to the kids of the area who entered the club. Freddie Gilroy recalled that ‘he knew boxing from A to Z, and had a wonderful way of bringing out the best in you. Nobody in the gym ever feared his wrath, we just dreaded his disapproval.’ McAree kept the club open five nights a week, for little or no reward. Known affectionately as the Silver Fox, McAree’s grey hair was thatched with shrewdness and devotion to the sport he loved. He knew that he had unearthed a nugget in Gilroy and nurtured the precocious talent with fatherly care. ‘Some kids have it, some kids don’t. Freddie had it right from the start,’ recalled McAree. Jimmy McAree died in 1996; his passing was a body blow to Freddie.
Gilroy was taught to box the old-fashioned way. One trick of McAree’s was to place halfpennies in Freddie’s closed fists when he was hitting the punch bags, and all sorts of punishments were threatened if they fell to the floor. That taught Gilroy how to punch properly, and to punch hard. Soon, Gilroy’s natural talent shone through and brought him honours at the local and national levels. ‘My first title came as a schoolboy when I won the club championships at the three-stone-twelve-pounds weight,’ recalled Freddie. ‘I then progressed on to the Down and Connor championships, which I won on four occasions, and then claimed the Ulster and Irish juvenile titles.’
By 1954, Gilroy was receiving accolades in the Belfast sporting pages as his skill came brilliantly to the fore. That year, he burst onto the national scene by beating Lisburn club’s Dicky Hanna to claim the Ulster junior title, and went on to take the Irish junior title the following month by stopping Paddy Courtney of the Avona club within two minutes. ‘Flyweight Freddie Gilroy is a boxer that one does not need rose-tinted glasses to watch,’ wrote Left Lead in the Irish News after Gilroy’s national victory. The Bosco boy was hot property across Ulster, in high demand by clubs eager to add his name to their annual shows. Under McAree, Gilroy learnt his trade by boxing hundreds of rounds with the then Irish senior flyweight champion, clubmate Jim Matthews. As 1955 dawned, Freddie Gilroy seemed set to plough his way with ease through the Irish senior ranks.
John Joseph Caldwell was born on 7 May 1938, in 63 Cyprus Street, a small two-up, two-down terraced house off Belfast’s Falls and Grosvenor roads. Poverty and unemployment were endemic in the area, where row upon row of terraced red-bricked houses were adorned with religious icons and dominated by the twin spires of St Peter’s Catholic Cathedral. John was one of six siblings born to John Caldwell senior and Bridget Browne, a native of the famous Pound Loney area of the lower Falls. The Caldwell family, like everyone else in the area, were devout Catholics, and daily Mass, devotions and prayer were the order of the day.
Bridget Caldwell was a proud housekeeper and was worshipped by her family. She was a humble but stern woman and strict with her children, who all knew the family rules by heart and the harsh consequences for breaking them. Blasphemy, swearing and impudence were all alien to the Caldwell home; praying, hard work and respect were the order of the day. On Easter Tuesday, 15 April 1941, Belfast bore the brunt of a Luftwaffe attack and almost a thousand lives were lost, as well as swathes of terraced houses in the devastated city. Temporary morgues were created to prepare the dead, and mass graves were dug in both the Milltown and City cemeteries. In Cyprus Street, John Caldwell had been blown from his cot that night as bombs landed too close by. It had been an early lesson in the need for self-defence.
John Caldwell senior worked hard to make ends meet as a joiner. One of his claims to fame was that he had built the boxing ring in the Immaculata boxing club at, of course, no charge. Like his brothers and sisters, John junior went to the nearby St Comgall’s School on Divis Street, where he soon became prey to bullies. Being small in Belfast attracts the attention of street thugs. John was exceptionally petite and this was noted by local toughs eager to prove their credentials in the hard-man stakes. In the face of constant bullying, it was no surprise that the ten-year-old Caldwell joined the Immaculata club. As a boy, John ran errands for the McCusker family in Hamill Street, and when he plucked up the courage to mention to Jack McCusker that he was interested in boxing, one of the most successful partnerships in Irish boxing history began.
The Immaculata club had been founded in 1944 by the Legion of Mary in Belfast’s Corn Market. The initial aim of the club had been to work with young men who had fallen foul of the law, in an attempt to provide an alternative lifestyle through sport. A year later, the club had left the centre of Belfast and relocated to Devonshire Street, in the Falls district, where it opened its doors to all of the boys in the vicinity. Since its establishment, the Immaculata had been the embodiment of boxing excellence. In the early days, trainers such as Tommy Madine, Willie Holden and the Baker brothers, Gerry and Joe, guided the youngsters through their paces. In 1946, future Olympian John McNally claimed the club’s first-ever Irish boys’ championship and placed the Falls Road on the Irish boxing map. He was just one of the greats who have represented the club, which has produced a long line of Ulster and Irish champions too numerous to mention.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the club went from strength to strength under the tutelage of Jack McCusker, Ned McCormick, Harry Enright and Vinty McGurk. The Mac was a small spit-and-sawdust affair which catered to the aspiring boxers of the district. McCusker, a former middleweight champion of Ulster, was more than a mere trainer. He was a gentleman, a father figure, an unofficial social worker, and totally devoted to bettering the lives of the kids of the area. In Caldwell, he discovered a gem. Not a puncher, John boxed with skill by throwing flurries of punishing combinations which bewildered his opponents. ‘I can’t teach him anything. He is teaching me,’ McCusker said of John’s progress.
At fourteen, John left the Hardinge Street Christian Brothers’ School and became an apprentice plumber with Dowling Central Merchants in Belfast’s Upper Queen Street. Apart from work and boxing, religion was central to his life. Every morning, he attended Mass at St Peter’s. Wednesday evenings were spent at the boys’ confraternity in the Clonard Monastery.
With distinctive flair, John swept all in front of him, claiming the Down and Connor, Ulster and Irish boys’ titles with ease. One fight, however, made the Belfast boxing fraternity sit up and realise that Caldwell was something special. That was the final of the 1954 Down and Connor juvenile championships, when he beat clubmate Seamus ‘Toby’ Shannon. Shannon had until then been the golden boy of Belfast boxing. In Caldwell, an opponent he had beaten previously, he came up against a boxer who had become the best ring technician in Ireland – he was virtually untouchable. Caldwell pulled off a surprising win over Shannon, showing no fear as he comprehensively out-boxed an opponent who had formerly had the Indian sign over him.
Thereafter, Caldwell blazed a trail to claim the national juvenile championship at 7st 7lb and dominate the Irish amateur scene. Religion, clean living and a devotion to training made him a skilled exponent of boxing who, by late 1955, had added the Ulster and Irish junior flyweight crowns to his burgeoning trophy cabinet (titles Gilroy had won a year earlier, before stepping up to the senior level). In the Irish junior final on 12 December, Caldwell astounded the audience in the National Stadium with a display of combination punching to defeat army representative Chris Kelly. Still only seventeen, all was falling into place for the precocious talent that was John Caldwell. Representing Ireland at the Olympic Games in 1956 became his sole objective. He would not be denied.
2.
FREDDIE ARRIVES ON THE SCENE
In 1955, Freddie Gilroy wasted no time in making his presence felt within the senior ranks of Irish boxing. On 7 January, he was victorious in Dublin at the Munster Council’s annual show when he outclassed the highly rated Des Adams of the St Andrews club. A week later, at the Ulster Hall, he was a decisive winner over Billy Haley in the annual Ulster vs. British Army bill, a victory which had the pundits sitting up and taking note of the Belfast flyweight’s talent. At only seventeen, with both the Ulster and Irish junior flyweight titles to his name, Gilroy then stunned the home crowd in Dublin’s National Stadium on 28 January when he outpointed the seasoned international Chris Rafter. The fight was considered an international trial and Gilroy had been the underdog. Rafter would later claim that the fact that his boxing boot had split open in the first round – which meant that he boxed two rounds in his bare feet – had hindered him, but Freddie’s win ensured him a place on an Irish side to face England in London the following month.
In early February in Belfast, Freddie knocked out the Holy Family club’s Dicky Connolly with a beautiful left hook to claim his first Ulster senior flyweight crown. A week later, in the opulent surroundings of the Royal Albert Hall, Ireland lost by six bouts to four against a formidable English team. However, it was Gilroy who stole the show, with an exhibition of power punching to claim the opening victory over Gunner Derek Lloyd, a man who would go on to win the British Amateur Boxing Association (ABA) title that year.
The superb form Gilroy had shown since winning the Irish junior crown in December was interrupted, however, in Glasgow on 10 March, when he lost narrowly to the rugged Frankie Jones, a future British professional flyweight champion. That bill at the St Andrew’s Hall had been between Scottish and Irish amateur select teams. For Gilroy, the defeat put his Irish championship dreams in jeopardy. He had damaged an eardrum during the fight and was advised to take a six-week break to allow the injury to heal. The result was that Chris Rafter would now have an easy route to claim the 1955 Irish flyweight title, which he duly did by defeating fellow Dubliner Des Adams on 18 March.
However, the fact that Gilroy had withdrawn from the competition left the question unresolved as to who was the best flyweight. Accordingly, Rafter and Gilroy were ordered by the board of the Irish Amateur Boxing Association (IABA) to box off for the right to represent Ireland at the international level. With places at stake against a visiting US Golden Gloves side, together with a trip to the European Championships in West Berlin, it was vital that Gilroy beat Rafter resoundingly. The bout was scheduled as part of the Arbour Hill club’s tournament held at the National Stadium on 22 April.
Gilroy did all that was asked of him, pounding Rafter to the boards at the end of the first round, leaving the Dubliner unable to continue. It was a powerful display of devastating punching, which drew gasps from the audience and reinforced Gilroy’s position as Ireland’s top flyweight. The reward for Gilroy was, however, a snub from the IABA when they named the Dubliner as flyweight for the visit of the US Golden Gloves team in Dublin on 6 May. That tournament was a full international with a further date fixed with the Americans in Belfast on 18 May. The Belfast visit was deemed only to be a ‘friendly’, and Gilroy was rightly annoyed at his omission from the Dublin date. A protest was lodged by the St John Bosco club against the decision to drop Gilroy, and the newspapers – both north and south – were highly critical of the strange choice of Rafter. The Association met three days before the bill and overturned its decision.
The National Stadium was displaying the ‘house full’ signs on 6 May as the Americans’ visit generated great interest in Dublin. Ironically, the programme for the bill reminded the crowd to consider the health of their American guests and requested that ‘patrons refrain from smoking during contests two, four, six and eight’ – obviously, Irish boxers were somewhat indifferent to tobacco smoke.
With the European Championships fast approaching, Gilroy entered the ring to face Tommy Reynolds, known as the Kansas Kid. Gilroy’s appearance bordered on disaster. Twice in the first round, the American sent him to the canvas with vicious body shots, and the doctor was called to the Irishman’s corner to check on an eye injury. As blood was streaming from Gilroy’s split eyebrow, the medic had no option but to order the fight stopped. Gilroy’s injury had been caused by a clash of heads. Reynolds later apologised; he was short-sighted enough to require glasses outside the ring, a condition he blamed for the clash of heads.
Although Ireland won the match by six bouts to four, it was a severe dose of reality for Gilroy, who had been made to look very average by the American. Since his eye required eight stitches, Gilroy was forced to withdraw from the Ulster Hall bill on 19 May, where Reynolds was an easy winner over Des Adams.
Despite his defeat by Reynolds, Gilroy’s eye injury was by mid-May considered to have healed sufficiently for him to be chosen for the flyweight berth for Berlin. The European Amateur Boxing Championships of 1955 opened on 27 May and Ireland sent a seven-strong team. Alongside Gilroy were: the experienced Ando Reddy at bantam; Eamonn Duffy at feather; Steve Coffey, a policeman based in Manchester, at lightweight; and Harry Perry at light welterweight. Two Arbour Hill boxers, Paddy Bourke and Paddy Lyons, were selected at middleweight and light heavyweight, respectively.
Despite the high hopes of the Irish management, by the third day of competition, the team of seven had been reduced to two. Harry Perry was first to exit the championships, when he lost on points to the Italian southpaw, Gino Ravaglia. Paddy Lyons was next to bow out, when was beaten by the thirty-three-year-old veteran Július Torma of Czechoslovakia. Torma, who had won gold in the welterweight division at the 1948 London Olympic Games, proved that he still possessed a punch as he shook Lyons with a procession of uppercuts to claim a unanimous verdict. He would go on to claim a bronze in the division in Berlin.
Freddie Gilroy entered the ring the following morning in Berlin to box the squat, powerful Romanian Mircea Dobrescu. From Bucharest, Dobrescu had represented his country in the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games and, in 1956, would beat John Caldwell on the way to claiming a silver medal in Melbourne. His pedigree was evident and his strength showed as he dealt easily with everything Freddie could throw at him.
In the first round, a wild swing from the Romanian as he was coming off the ropes caught Freddie flush on the jaw and sent him to the canvas for a count of eight. It was now a case of damage-limitation for the Belfast boy as he climbed to his feet to back-pedal in the face of an unrelenting attack by his opponent. The bell saved Gilroy, but it was now only a matter of time. That time duly arrived in the first minute of the second round when the Romanian nailed Freddie with a venomous right hand. Visibly shaken, Gilroy stared into the eyes of the Italian referee, who hesitated briefly before giving the order to box on. Within seconds, Gilroy was sent crumpling to the floor for the third and final time and his dream was over. At seventeen years of age, Gilroy had learned a hard lesson against a seasoned veteran; it was a dose of tough medicine.
Steve Coffey was next to bow out when he lost convincingly to Finland’s Pentti Rautiainen, while Ando Reddy was on the wrong end of a poor decision in his bout with Belgium’s Daniel Hellebuyck. To add to Ireland’s woes, Paddy Bourke lost to the German Rolf Caroli and Eamonn Duffy was well beaten by the Polish Zdzisław Soczewiński. Ireland never got near to the medal positions. By the quarter-finals, the team was packing its bags and preparing for the flight home.
The performance of the Irish team in Berlin was extremely disappointing. In the 1953 European Championships in Warsaw, John McNally had claimed bronze and Terry Milligan had taken silver, but the class of 1955 had been made to look particularly ordinary. For the IABA, it had been a chastening exercise which had hit its coffers hard. The hype which had been created by the victory in Dublin over the Golden Gloves team in May was now a fading memory. Irish amateur boxing had been humbled in West Berlin.
The manner of the defeat to Dobrescu had caused Gilroy and McAree to reflect on what lay ahead for Freddie. It had become apparent that the Belfast teenager was maturing physically and that, in trying to remain under eight stones, he was weak in the flyweight division. The struggle against nature was now a losing battle for Gilroy and, since Ando Reddy had decided to hang up his gloves, Freddie made the natural move up to bantamweight.
A trip to Germany in June to face the cream of that country’s talent saw Gilroy make his bantamweight debut in a green singlet. In front of a crowd of eight thousand in Kiel, the Irish team lost by seven bouts to three, but Freddie’s win over Ernest Kappelmann was considered to have been the highlight of the evening, because of the Irishman’s superb display of boxing skill. Gilroy’s fine form continued in October in the National Stadium when he defeated Charles Branch of the United States in a notable 8–4 Irish victory.
Ireland’s most emphatic win of the year – of the decade, in fact – came in Dublin on 25 November, with a 9–1 defeat of England’s ABA champions. Chris Rafter began the rout at flyweight and was followed by Gilroy, who bested Don Weller. The fight was stopped at the start of the third round, with blood streaming from Weller’s eye; Gilroy had been well ahead on points. With the Melbourne Olympic Games a year away, the bantamweight place seemed to be Gilroy’s for the taking.
3.
OLYMPIC DREAMS SO HARD TO BEAT
Throughout the 1950s, Dubliner Chris Rafter may well have had nightmares about flyweights from Belfast. With Freddie Gilroy now boxing as a bantamweight, Rafter could well have thought that his path to the Olympic Games was secured. However, Gilroy’s ‘terrible twin’ stood ready to spoil the party.
JUST HOW GOOD IS BELFAST FLYWEIGHT, JOHN CALDWELL? screamed a back-page headline in the Irish Press in early January 1956. That tribute had been prompted by Caldwell’s emphatic victory over Roy Davis in the Ulster Hall on 4 January, in the annual Ulster vs. British Army tournament. To the roars of the Belfast crowd, John had stolen the show with a display of self-assured boxing which saw him outpoint the former Welsh miner. In the programme notes that night, Caldwell said his ambitions for 1956 were ‘to win the Ulster and Irish senior titles, represent Ireland in the Golden Gloves tournament in Chicago and at the Olympic Games at Melbourne’. At just seventeen, Caldwell’s confidence and self-belief shone vibrantly through his boyish exterior.
