Bernard Dunne from the CIE club in Dublin lifted the flagging morale of the Irish boxing contingent in the European and Olympic qualifying tournament in Tampere, Finland, yesterday.

Dunne defeated his Russian opponent, Alexander Kozlouski, and advances to the second phase of the Olympic qualifying event in the featherweight division.

It was a narrow victory (4-2) and Dunne now faces a major challenge in the next round where he meets Faulk Huste from Germany.

However, after three defeats yesterday only five of the 12 Irish boxers are left in contention for places in the European and Olympic championships.

The five are John Kiely from Limerick, Harry Cunningham from Belfast, Bernard Dunne from Dublin, Kevin Cummiskey from Tralee and Ian Timms from Dublin.

Eliminated yesterday were Liam Cunningham from Holy Family in Belfast, Willie Waite from Belfast and Sean Barrett from Rylan in Cork.

Also out is Mick Roche from Dublin, who was beaten by the Italian Di Masco on the extraordinary score of 1-0. Irish coach Nicholas Cruz, was scathing: "It seems to me that that the Italian scored the only point of the bout with a slap and the judges didn't see any real punch in the fight, which is ridiculous."