Ward finds the glove fits as he prepares to step into the Garden
TWO years ago, when Donal Ward left for New York with his fiancée Katie, there was no grand plan. He just wanted a fresh start.
A persistent hip problem, which had required three surgeries, had curtailed his county career with Roscommon and he was feeling burnt out from his work with the prison service.
He knew that he would play a bit of football. Social networks in the Big Apple are sprung open by Gaelic Games. Apart from that, the page was blank. Nothing was set in stone. Flying out from Dublin Airport, it never crossed his mind that this new chapter would eventually lead him to fighting in the most famous boxing arena in the world, Madison Square Garden. But this coming Saturday, Ward will do just that, hoping to join an illustrious roll of honour that includes ‘Sugar’ Ray Robinson and Danny Jacobs by capturing the New York Golden Gloves middleweight title.
Interestingly, football helped Ward go down the road that has led to the Garden. It was a chance meeting through a teammate with the Kerry club that saw him lace up his boxing gloves, not that it was a completely new departure.
Growing up in Loughglynn, Ward’s energy was constantly divided between Gaelic and boxing. He was the Western Gaels player who boxed and the boxer who played for Western Gaels. His father, Frank, was a respected trainer and driving force behind the local boxing club, to which his son brought home underage national titles.
Boxing brought him all around Europe. He fought on Ireland teams with the likes of John Joe Nevin and Ray Moylette. But Gaelic football is woven into Roscommon’s social fabric so when local legend Fergal O’Donnell called him after becoming Rossies manager in the autumn of 2009 and invited him into the senior squad, there was only one decision that Ward was ever going to make.
‘There was always going to come a time when I had to choose between boxing and Gaelic football,’ Ward recalled on a recent crisp spring afternoon in Queen’s.
‘And when you are getting a phone call from Fergie O’Donnell, a living legend in Roscommon, and he is asking you to join his county panel, you don’t say no. If it had been anyone else, I mightn’t have done it, might have kept boxing and played club football.’
He was part of O’Donnell’s panel when they won the Connacht title in 2010. ‘But I didn’t get much game-time,’ Ward remembers. It would be the following summer before he made his Championship debut for the Rossies, in Gaelic Park where he would be playing for New York a few years later when Leitrim visited the Bronx.
Ward says that injuries ensured that he never reached his true potential in the primrose and blue and before the start of the 2016 season, he informed O’Donnell and Kevin McStay that his body had enough of county football. But once he settled in New York, his
performances for the Kerry club, whom he captained to a League title last year, meant he got the call to join the most talented football squad from the city to ever participate in the Connacht Championship.
Armagh’s gifted forward Jamie Clarke and Neil Collins, a fellow Roscommon native, were among those that Ward met at training every evening, furnishing the belief that they were going to cause a sensation when Leitrim visited the Bronx. And they came close enough to history to touch it. New York, with Ward in the full-back line, led Leitrim for most of their Connacht Championship encounter, but the game slipped from them in the dying moments. And in extra-time, Gary Plunkett stepped forward to nail the winning point for the visitors.
‘Heart-breaking,’ recalls Ward, who played full-back that day. ‘It really was. It took a long time to get over that. We really thought we were going to win it.
‘But it was a great experience, playing for New York. It was my first year with them, and there was an awful lot of hype and expectation around the team because we had players of the calibre of Jamie Clarke and Neil Collins playing for us. Everyone felt that we had a great chance to turn Leitrim over.’
As his former team-mates are preparing for the visit of Allianz League champions Mayo next month, Ward is getting ready for an altogether different challenge. ‘I made my Championship debut in Gaelic Park and I played my last ever Championship match in Gaelic Park,’ Ward says of the symmetry of his county career.
After the GAA season ended in New York last year, Ward decided to devote all his energies back to boxing. Even during the years playing with Roscommon, and club football with Kilmacud Crokes in Dublin, his passion for the ring never dimmed. In 2013, working as a prison guard in Cloverhill, he represented the Irish Prison Service in the world Police and Fire Games in Belfast in the light-heavyweight division. And won gold. That convinced him to give the nationals another shot the following year.
He was beaten in the semi-finals by Matthew Tinker, who it just so happened was the man who opened the door to the Golden Gloves for him in New York. Tinkler worked with one of Ward’s team-mates on the Kerry GAA club. They met up and went to a Canelo Alvarez bout in Madison Square Garden. Tinker spoke enthusiastically about New York Athletic club and the trainer EJ Burke. And he could get Ward in the door.
‘Boxing was always there in the background, it was an itch I wanted to scratch again,’ Ward said. ‘A lot of those I would have fought when I was younger went on to the High Performance programme or went on to be professional. I remember one Ireland team I fought for in some international tournament, I was the only one of the six of us who didn’t end up turning pro.’
‘So, after the football season ended last year, I went down to New York Athletic club and EJ and Mike Fulham took me under the wing. I shed more than 15 lbs. Back in Ireland, I was fighting at light-heavyweight but I am middleweight over here and I have seen the benefit,’ Ward explains.
He did a lot of sparring with Tinker and others like Brian Glynn, brother of Galway hurler Johnny, who is fighting in the novice super-heavyweight division. Burke and Fulham recognised Ward’s talent and were eager to enter him into the New York Ring-Masters (formerly Golden Gloves) tournament. And he began with a bang, defeating the defending champion Brett Pastore in the opening round. And things have just went from there.
In between his shifts at Sissy McGinty’s bar in Queen’s and training to win New York’s prestigious amateur boxing crown, Ward also maintains his passion for the fight game. ‘You can lose the run of yourself over here in America, there are big pro cards every week,’ he says.
‘I have gone to the Garden a few times, and BarclaysCenter. Saw Katie Taylor and Michael Conlan fight over here, Canelo a couple of times, Danny Jacobs. Even went to Canelo-Golovkin in Las Vegas. You have to be careful, it is possible to go a big fight night nearly every weekend, if you could.’
And now Ward will participate in his own big fight night. His father, Frank, from whom he inherited the passion for the sport, is travelling over to watch his son fight in the most famous arena of all. His mother will be in the crowd too, and a few others are travelling across from Roscommon.
No matter what happens in Madison Square Garden, Saturday’s likely to be a good night in Sissy McGinty’s.