Once a boxing mecca, Annagry Boxing Club set to answer the bell again

Moves are afoot for the revival of one of Donegal’s most storied boxing clubs.

Annagry Boxing Club, once a leading light of the sweet science in the Rosses area, ceased 13 years ago.

Now, though, the club is set to fight again.

Led by the likes of coaches Charles O’Donnell and Kieran Boyle, Annagry Boxing Club is hoping to open its doors again by late summer.

The former Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) Hall in Annagry - the scene of some boxing blockbusters over the years - will be the club’s base.

“There has been a very good reaction,” O’Donnell told Donegal Live. “Parents in the area and boxing people are delighted that they will have Annagry Boxing Club as an outlet again.

“We have some paperwork to get sorted and it’s getting a bit late for the current season, but we’ll be ready to go properly later in the year.”

His involvement in boxing goes back some time.

His father, Charlie, was one of the early proponents of Annagry Boxing Club, which was formed in 1968 by Anthony Dora McGinley and George Doherty. Charlie won the novice heavyweight title in 1950, when representing Rosses BC at the first championships hosted by the County Donegal Boxing Board.

“I remember my mother would be out visiting neighbours,” O’Donnell recalls, “and my father, who bought a set of gloves for us in Letterkenny, put the table to one side. The neighbours’ boys would come over and we would just go at it. My mother came back and se the blood.”

He talks of the kitchen floor sparring with the likes of Brian Kay, John Kay, Danny Kay and John Lally with a real fondness. From 1970-72 he was an Ulster champion and lost out in an Irish final in ’72.

In the 1990s, Patrick Sharkey - son of former Olympic boxer Pa Sharkey - and Brian Mulholland won Irish titles under O’Donnell’s guidance at Rosses Boxing Club, for whom Connie Gallagher was among the leading charges.

Noel McBride, Jason Quigley’s first ever opponent and who himself went on to win an Irish title, is another to come out of O’Donnell’s tutelage.

“I am delighted that the club is getting back,” O’Donnell says. “We have some good lads in the year. We have been talking to them and we’ll get them in the door now and get working with them all. It’s great to have this club standing again and we hope to have some champions back in the coming years.”

Boxing in the area has a rich tradition.

In January, 1930, one of the first recorded tournaments ever held in Donegal took place in McBride’s Hall, Annagry. The event was promoted by Mr Jerry Lynne from Derry.

Lynne’s name would feature prominently in the promotion of boxing across Donegal and the north west in general.

The highlight of the night was the exhibition bout between Ranger Harkin from Derry, a former Irish welterweight champion, and Garda PJ Mulcahy, from Letterkenny, who was the Garda junior welterweight champion in 1927.

In the early 1940s, former professional lightweight Billy Sullivan from Buncrana drew with Meenaleck’s Joe Curran in an exhibition bout at the AOH Hall in Annagry.

The Rosses BC won first place in the Donegal Championships of 1950, winning four titles and the same year Pa Sharkey (heavyweight) and Patrick Harley (light-heavyweight) lost narrowly in Ulster Senior finals.

One of the most famous exports from the Rosses was Harry ‘Kid’ Duffy from Meenbanad.

Around the same time as Duffy was making a name for himself, so too was John Harley, of Rannyhual, who was the amateur heavyweight champion in the State of Montana.

Duffy spent eleven years in the United States, where he made a name for himself in the ring, before returning to Scotland. Duffy is said to have fought 203 times, winning 175 of those contests and losing 10. Of his wins, 125 were via points and 50 by way of knock out.

Among Duffy’s more memorable scalps include Willie Buff, the amateur lightweight champion, and he went the distance with Barney Ross, later to become a three-weight world champion, who retired with a 72-4-3, 22KOs record.

Duffy won the lightweight championship of Indiana and Kentucky and was the featherweight king of the Mid-West.

Pa Sharkey

The greats of the area have real standing.

In 1932, Andrew Sharkey, a garda from Kincasslagh, won the Ulster heavyweight title and the same year he shook the boxing world. Sharkey KO’d Rameck, the German heavyweight champion, in a bout held in Ballyhaunis.

An account of the fight said: ‘The practically unknown Rosses man put the 18-stone mass of bone muscle out for the count - a feat that no other boxer had previously performed.’.

In 1936, James Campbell won the Irish Army Senior Middleweight title, while the noted writer Fionn Mac Cumhaill from Meenamara in the Upper Rosses was the amateur welterweight champion of the Mid-Western States.

In 1956, Conal Doogan - who emigrated from Gortnasate - twice defeated Scottish heavyweight kingpin McVicar in 1956. Two years later, Doogan won the Irish Junior middleweight title.

Rosses native Eddie Duffy, from Meenbanad, won Irish Junior featherweight titles in 1952 and 1954 while boxing for Gentex in Athlone, while he also competed in the 1955 European Championships in West Berlin. Duffy, at 57kgs, defeated Bogomil Burov from Bulgaria in his opening round before losing out to Zdzisław Soczewiński of Poland.

In March 1970, 400 people jammed their way into the same AOH Hall that the Annagry BC will now make its home.

‘Those who witnessed will no longer entertain any doubt regarding the popularity of the boxing art in this part of Donegal,’ was how one local newspaperman of the time put it.

The hall was ‘packed to capacity’ and the highlight was the lightweight bout between Charlie Nash and Gerald Sweeney. Nash went on to box at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich and a storied career saw him win British and European lightweight titles. On that 1970 night in Annagry, Nash stopped local favourite Sweeney in the second round.

Noel McBride in action against Jason Quigley.

Now, a new chapter is set to be written out west.

The likes of Pa Jo O’Donnell, Linda McBride, Dawn Mulholland, Stephanie Taylor, Martin Gallagher, Declan O’Donnell and Liam Boyle are also involved behind the scenes.

“We are always looking for people, no matter what help they can be,” Charles O’Donnell says. “In the first season I remember in 1968, we had our first outing in Derrybeg and we had 13 champions out of the first season. We can’t wait to get going again.”