Sir, - Sean Kilfeather's "Fifth Column" is aptly titled. His recent offering (May 9th) once again tries to muddy the waters on boxing and sport.
I have written on this before. Boxing is not sport. Your correspondent and his fellow-travellers repeatedly chant the "boxing-sport-boxing-sport" mantra whenever a tragedy occurs.
Once the boxing-sport equation has been established they go on to prove that it is less dangerous than rugby, hurling, hang-gliding, etc., and because of this a ban would necessitate banning all sports. The fallacy is the linkage of boxing with sport. Your paper seems to allow this sophistry be repeatedly regurgitated.
Let me reiterate. Rugby, hurling and the like do not award points on the scoreboard for injuring and maiming your opponent. In boxing, there is no other way to put points on the board. Therefore boxing is a fundamentally different entity. Its whole ethos is totally different from sport, where the deliberate injuring of another player is regarded with horror. Players who are caught, in flagrante, are punished on and off the pitch. When was a boxer ever banned for throwing a punch?
Your correspondent understands the logic of my argument very well and knows he cannot allow the real debate - about whether boxing is a sport - ever to begin. Because the answer is starkly obvious, and the consequences, more so. No funding, no Olympics - oblivion.
So, on cue, after each tragedy, he blathers on with high-minded concern about the increasing dangers of "sports" and the increasing pressures all "players" find themselves under. Finally he thoughtfully points out that ".. . there are limits to what the human body can take" and that "the pursuit of a sound mind in a healthy body is the ultimate aim of sport".
Shame on you for allowing this specious obfuscation to be repeated in your paper. By doing so I believe you are party to a deliberate and ignoble deception. - Yours, etc., Liam J. McMullin, FRCSI,
Knocknacarra,
Galway.