Cork County Boxing Board finalising events which will acknowledge national success by Cork boxers

The Cork County Boxing Board are now finalising a calendar of events, which will acknowledge the national success achieved by Cork boxers this year.

The board will shortly announce details of a campaign to further enhance the sport on Leeside.

There is a great spirit in the sport in recent years. 

All clubs are reporting a massive increase in both male and female membership. 

In the vast majority of Cork clubs the organisation and facilities improved enormously year on year, over recent years. 

The success being achieved at every level of the sport is phenomenal. 

Success breaths success, and Cork club's are now enjoying the fruits of their sporting labour. 

The next goal for the county board is to encourage senior boxing to once again produce Olympic representatives and Cork boxing is now on the road to achieve this aspiration.

Meanwhile, summer is traditionally the closed season for amateur boxing in Ireland. 

However, in recent years, the IABA have organised U19 championships. 

Equally nowadays, many clubs travel away to international club tournaments in the United States, Portugal, Spain, and even to Australia.

After the second World War Fr O’Leary’s Boxing Club operated from the Hall bearing the same name, and was very prominent on the southside of the city. 

The club was based on the Bandon Road and were very successful particularly in underage competition during the late 1940’s and throughout the fifties; the club were very successful in the Cork County Championships.

By far the most prominent club on the southside of the City during that era. 

Other clubs of the same vintage included Nemo, Douglas CIE and the first Togher Club. 

Fr O’Leary’s Boxing Club had over one hundred boxers. 

Their most prominent official was Charlie Atta. 

Charlie would visit schools in the parish, Sullivan Quay, Greenmount and Glasheen etc and encourage boys to join the club. 

The parish priest in the Lough Church back then was Fr Walsh, and as a friend of Charlie he regularly canvassed for new members to join the club during his homily to the congregation at Sunday mass. 

Charlie Atta was a man of German extraction. 

He was the proprietor of a very popular chip-shop at the bottom of Barrack Street. 

He was also president of the Cork County Boxing Board.

The late Tim O’Sullivan, a former International boxer and President of the Cork Ex-Boxers Association, was also a very close friend of Atta’s. 

Tim lived a long life and up to his death at 92, his brain was sharp as a tack. 

A couple of years prior to his passing Tim recalled a great summertime boxing story involving a tournament organised by Charlie and the committee of the Fr O’Leary’s Boxing Club.

According to Tim, who was both an eyewitness and a participant, the southside club organised a boxing tournament at the bandstand, which was located in the small park on the Mardyke on Bonfire Night, 23rd June 1948.

The small park on the Mardyke was situated adjacent to the UCC gates on the Western Road and today it is a greenway drive through for traffic from the Western Road going to the Mardyke. 

The main feature of this park was that it boasted a magnificent bandstand where bands played on summer Sunday afternoons.

The tournament was a city centre affair with 12 bouts and the boxers came from the Fr O’Leary’s Club, who took on the CCNBC. 

This was a club based on Lavitt’s Quay. 

The main composition of the club was The Cork Echo Boys, hence the abbreviated name. 

This club was the Cork Catholic News Boys Club. 

This was a very competitive club on the Cork boxing scene for over 20 years. 

Among their top boxers were Tim O’Sullivan and Paddy Kenny, who went on to represent Ireland at the Olympic Games in Rome in 1960.

A huge crowd gathered for the boxing tournament. 

The Butter Exchange Band were invited to entertain the attendance by Charlie Atta, who was a great organiser and promoter. 

The band walked from Shandon Street to the Mardyke.

They played all the way, and crowds from every corner followed the band. 

The boxing commenced at around 8pm and concluded 90 minutes later, and according to all reports, patrons were very competitively entertained by the boxing athletes who left everything in a make shift ring situated between the bandstand on one side, and the making of a huge bona’ on the’ other side, which was lit at 9.30pm following the last bout.

These were economically tough times and on the night, there was no cups or medals for the athletes. 

However, all the boxers received a huge helping of Chester Cake, washed down by copious cups of rasa, while the band played the Bona blazed, and Corkonians of all ages sang into the early hours of the morning.

This was also the year that this country officially became the Republic of Ireland. 

Four years later, at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952, Ireland won its first Olympic boxing medal when John McNally won the silver medal.

He was the trail blazer who ignited the flame which paved the way for boxing becoming Ireland’s most successful sport at the greatest show on earth.