Billy Walsh saga: gloves off as IABA attacks Sports Ireland

The Billy Walsh saga has moved on to a new phase, bubbling over into a political row between the Irish Amateur Boxing Association (IABA) and Sport Ireland. With the Wexford-born boxing coach now gone to the US, the IABA have accused Sport Ireland of going beyond its authority, of being disingenuous and of orchestrating a campaign "to exercise control over the IABA's High Performance Unit".

Sport Ireland have rejected those assertions, stating that they “were sincerely trying to keep Billy Walsh and we understood that the IABA always wanted to keep him. That’s our position and, in response to questions this week, we gave straight answers”.

The two sides will be heard next Wednesday in the public forum of an Oireachtas committee meeting, chaired by Fine Gael TD John O'Mahony.

After a week of silence, the IABA came out fighting with a round of media interviews and a statement on its website that ran to almost 1,500 words.

In it, they expressed surprise at Walsh’s resignation last Monday and went on to detail some of the meetings they had had with their highly successful coach since he first gave them notice of the offer he’d received from the US back in February.

Remuneration matters

Despite Walsh having stated repeatedly that the sticking point for him was never anything to do with finance, the IABA pointedly referred to him initially telling them that he had been made an offer “for crazy money”. They went on to state that “it is important to point out that in all of our dealings with Billy during this process, the vast majority of the discussions related to remuneration matters. To suggest otherwise is a total misrepresentation of the facts.”

With Walsh gone, the IABA's most trenchant criticism was aimed at Sport Ireland, specifically John Treacy and Kieran Mulvey, for their threats of a funding review earlier in the week.

“What we find most reprehensible is that Sport Ireland appears to have ulterior motives, does not have the best interests of Irish boxing at heart, has made unsubstantiated allegations, and we believe, has issued threats to funding Irish boxing that are fundamentally illegal and beyond its authority.

“The financial accounts of the organisation are fully audited and the IABA rejects in the strongest possible terms the unsubstantiated inferences by Sport Ireland that the IABA is not governed effectively. We hereby call upon the Chairman and CEO of Sport Ireland to unreservedly withdraw the derogatory comments and unsubstantiated allegations made by them against our CEO.

“We will vigorously defend the disgraceful allegations made by Sport Ireland, both directly in our future interactions with the agency, and reserve the right to take whatever further action we deem appropriate.

“This is a defence of Irish boxing against claims by individuals who have absolutely no experience, knowledge or credibility in this sport, a sport akin to the GAA that is driven at a local level by people passionate about their sport, who are providing the pipeline of boxers that will bring continued success to Ireland on the world stage.”

Sport Ireland responded by revealing that it had written to the IABA on Wednesday “seeking answers to specific and relevant questions” and stating that“it would be very useful if those responses were provided in advance of the Oireachtas Committee meeting”.

“We are specifically trying not to get into a tit-for-tat with the IABA,” said a spokesman for Sport Ireland. “We were waiting on them to make a statement and they have done so. Obviously, there are parts of it that we don’t agree with. Our opinion would be that it didn’t bring a lot of new information to light . . .

“It’s unfair commentary [to accuse Sport Ireland of having ulterior motives]. We had the best interests of Irish boxing at heart . . .We are trying to understand how we got here. Whatever way we look at it, Billy is gone and the system moves on. The only thing to do now is to try and understand what happened over the past number of weeks. . . Hopefully we can coolly and calmly work out how we got to this point.”