New Irish boxing chief: 'I'm hopeful, but not naive, we've got work to do'

Irish Examiner

17-05-2025

Boxing, said Ken Norton, is a great sport and a dirty business. The legendary American heavyweight was referring to his 15 years in the pro game across three decades, but the amateur arena has known its fair share of controversies and debacles.
Both globally and locally.
The modern Irish story has been one of unprecedented success in the ring - from Olympic levels all the way down – and a roll call of scandals, squabbles and internal fighting outside it. The sport, via the Irish Athletic Boxing Association (IABA), has acted as both Jekyll and Hyde.
If the dysfunction at national administrative levels has been kept largely outside the tent that houses the high-performance (HP) unit, then it has still caused serious damage to the stitching through the losses of people like Gary Keegan, Billy Walsh and Bernard Dunne.
All three held the top post in that elite unit.
Keegan was the man who had the vision and the masterplan for the elite system in the first place. He fought the good fight for five years in the face of some extraordinary factionalism before folding up his bits and bobs and taking his expertise on the road.
The other two saw their involvements ended by thewhat became impossible working conditions that seeped in from the wider governing body despite an ongoing haul of medals from underage levels through to the Olympic Games.
Now it's Jon Macken's turn to make it work.
A Dubliner who enjoyed a successful eight-year stint as High-Performance with Canoeing Ireland, Macken boxed as a child in the Arbor Hill, Phibsboro and Broadstone clubs in the city's northside. And he has a long association with kickboxing too.
Still only three weeks into the job, and what he terms his 'honeymoon' period, Macken sought out Patricia Heberle, who held the Performance Director (PD) role on an interim basis at the Paris Olympics, as well as Dunne, when performing his due diligence.
A former WBA world super bantamweight champion, Dunne spent five years in the PD role. He delivered two Olympic podiums in 2021 and another 27 medals in that time, but the nature of his exit throws a harsh light on the wider body.
It was less than a year after the Tokyo Games when he handed in his resignation as high-performance boss, the move coming after he filed a complaint with the IABA in which he alleged that his position had been undermined in an anonymous document.
The IABA agreed that the letter was malicious and an attack on the HP unit and its director, while acknowledging that a small number of the 'Irish boxing family' had expressed strong issues with the unit going back to its first days in 2003 under Keegan.
Here was boxing's dysfunction wrapped up in one bitter fallout. It ended with a settlement at the Workplace Relations Commission in September of 2023, by which time one of the best minds in Irish boxing had followed Walsh in taking all that expertise and passion overseas.
'It was out in his house,' Mackey says of the sitdown with Dunne. 'He was very hospitable with his time and gave some advice. He spoke about his experiences and gave me some advice, maybe [about] just approaching it from my own perspective.
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'His advice, which was welcome, was to be your own person going in there. Make up your own mind. You've probably heard stories and rumours and things like that. But he said just to be open to what you see yourself and make your own impression of it.' That has been taken on board.
The new man's approach has been slowly-slowly. He has started off by getting the lay of the land, understanding how things work, by building relationships and trust. Observing, and then identifying any gaps and areas where the programme can be streamlined.
The club scene is given its due as he talks, and he met members of the Central Council last week. The new president is Anto Donnelly who has made encouraging sounds about the need to end the turmoil, increase transparency and secure greater State funding.
It was Donnelly's acceptance speech that persuaded Macken to go for the HP role. He found himself nodding in agreement to virtually everything said, and he is happy to instigate a more open-door policy when it comes to his own bailiwick and the executive's access to it.
So, it's a clean slate, then. At least that's the intention.
'I'm not going to speculate about what happened in the past,' he explained when reminded of his predecessors' fates in the role. 'That was a different context I guess, different people involved at different times within those voluntary committees.
'From my perspective, I don't see high-performance being a disconnected, siloed part of the sport that operates on its own. It's important that it's integrated into the broader context of the organisation.' The aim, he says, is to maintain lines of communication and 'avoid any catastrophes' in the future. And the IABA voting to pursue dual membership of the International Boxing Association and World Boxing means that the threat of Olympic non-involvement for Ireland is now over.
There's a new, as yet unnamed CEO, to walk in the door as well. Macken has had informal talks with them already and feels the new IABA boss is someone who will bring a 'fresh perspective' to the post. As will Macken himself.
His role in Canoeing Ireland involved a much smaller HP team of athletes and staff with most of the canoeists based abroad. Boxing works off a base of 360 clubs with 60 elite boxers across three tiers and various weight categories working under his nose.
He describes the new gig as a behemoth.
Some of the ways and means will cross over from the old brief to the new. Other aspects will require different thinking, new tools honed for a unique job. The goal is simple and written into the strategic plan: a ten per cent increase in Ireland's haul of international medals.
Macken is encouraged by the youth of the talent in the programme and the gap between that and the average age profile of the 52 medallists in Paris at the last Games. He sees it as potential to grow, for boxers to mature in the ring between now and LA in 2028.
'Our aspiration is always going to be to build on the legacies of days gone by,' he explains. 'Everybody is aware that we are standing on the shoulders of giants and the work that has been done in the past.
'I know it's been up and down, topsy-turvy and controversial at times, but at the heart of it is a real ambition to do better. I'm going to lead on that ambition and hope we can do something significant over the next four years.
'Look, there will be times over the next four years when we have opportunities to show that potential at World and European level, at benchmark events, but sport is not predictable, it's not linear.
'There are going to be times when we do well, there are going to be times when we take a bit of a kicking and we're going to go back and review and hopefully plan and do better for the next time out. I'm hopeful, but I'm not naive either, we have work to do.'