R rolls with punches
Oach happy with extra preparation time
nt man, a very good O’Sullivan,’ he said. a high level between nning Youth 1, Youth Senior national titles, g that he has really mself, although it was hat put him on that d coach, Liam Walsh e was a head coach in lub. He was involved was hit by a car and n the club at the time med into a coach. I time and that was a le to be filled, it was the club would have coaching game like a with top-class fighters hers under his wing, eads, leading to an invitation to join Irish boxing’s elite high performance team in 2008.
‘I probably got my first opportunity as a high performance coach in Dublin on the back of the achievements of Gary and Eddie Byrne. Other guys like Anthony Furlong and Seamus King went on to be Irish champions, and I probably got credit for their achievements, and got a phone call to come up and help on a weekly basis, every Saturday morning up in Dublin,’ he said.
He wasn’t accredited for the London Olympics, working as an unpaid volunteer at the time, but he played his part in the successes of Katie Taylor, John Joe Nevin, Michael Conlan and Paddy Barnes, and enjoyed every second of the journey.
‘I was doing it for four or five years without a position or any pay, but when you’re holding pads or implementing programmes, the boxers don’t see you as a volunteer. It was the same role, the only difference was that I didn’t get paid.
‘I worked with the guys in the preparation leading up to London. I didn’t travel to the London Olympics as I didn’t have accreditation. It was like serving my time really, it was a good experience,’ he said.
Bolger’s hard work eventually paid off, becoming an integral part of Ireland’s High Performance Unit, a natural progression having worked closely with fellow Wexford man Billy Walsh and Zaur Antia in a voluntary capacity for so long.
When his good friend Walsh departed for the U.S.A. in controversial circumstances in 2015, with the Irish Amateur Boxing Association (I.A.B.A.) allowing the talented coach to slip through their fingers, it must have been a strange time for Bolger, but he said it was just a case of life goes on.
‘To be honest, where I worked, and that’s on the gym floor, things were normal. We just carried on. There was myself, John Conlan, and Zaur took up the role of head coach.
‘The process every day was the same, same training techniques. Billy had drifted into the role of High Performance Director because of necessity, so he didn’t really spend as much time on the floor. That was our role so from that point of view nothing really changed for us regarding our preparation.
‘It was just the fact that we knew Billy was fighting a battle. We tried to not let it influence us at all, and it didn’t,’ he said.
Bolger’s first experience of the Olympic cauldron came in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, working with the likes of Katie Taylor, Paddy Barnes, Joe Ward and Michael Conlan in a Games that was shrouded in controversy for Irish boxers, with some extremely questionable decisions still sticking in his throat.
‘It was a very difficult experience but I’m sure it will benefit in my career going forward. It was a difficult time. We went with such excitement and such optimism, but it was fairly difficult from the start.
‘There was some good performances from our team, performances that in the past would have seen our hands being raised. Day after day nothing seemed to go our way, but the performances were good.
‘The A.I.B.A. have borne the brunt of it since then so we’re in new territory with the Tokyo Olympics, with the I.O.C. taking charge of judging.
‘It’s an objective sport but you do your job, work hard in the gyms and try to box to the criteria that you think you’re going to be judged on. Nobody can ask for anything more than that, but sometimes it can be mind-boggling when you’ve done enough and you don’t get the decisions.
‘This is one of the biggest downsides to boxing, the biggest obstacle that you have to overcome sometimes. Unfortunately, it’s always been that way and it will probably be that way forever. We just have to keep trying to adapt to it,’ he said.
Like Billy Walsh before him, Bolger’s departure from Irish boxing in 2017 was avoidable, had he got more recognition from the I.A.B.A., but having been headhunted by the German Boxing Federation and offered a four-year deal, he made the decision to take a leap of faith.
‘Even when I flew to Frankfurt for my interview it was the unknown, and I was thinking it’s better the devil you know. My role kind of changed when Billy left. A lot of people would interact with me and see me as somebody they could relate to.
‘My role evolved into something like a head coach, which I wasn’t, Zaur was the head coach.
‘I wanted to get acknowledgement that this is what I was doing on a daily basis. Of course, everybody looks to better their contract and get better security because I was only getting one year contracts.
‘One year is not a long time, so I wasn’t even talking financially, I just wanted a little bit more security and a bit more acknowledgement for what my role was,’ he said.
The 50-year-old has clearly moved on from those tumultuous times and is leaving no stone unturned as he looks forward to the challenges ahead, but he does admit that the ante is turned up when German fighters pit their wits against a boxer from his home country.
‘That’s when the pressure is on me, moreso than any of our boxers. You feel this is how you’ll be judged. It’s a little bit personal, in a good way.
‘It brings a little bit of added pressure, but no more than when we go up against the U.S.A. We always meet up afterwards.
‘It’s a good rivalry but it’s definitely a rivalry that exists between myself, Billy and Zaur, but purely in the way it should be in a sporting sense,’ he said.
Bolger has another four-year contract on the table, which if he signs on the dotted line would keep him in the job until 2024, but for now his eyes are firmly on Tokyo and helping to bring back medals to a country that has had a dearth of success in recent years, having only won one bronze in Rio four years ago and leaving London (2012) and Beijing (2008) empty-handed.
‘That’s the plan. You try to make an impact in the qualifiers and then when you get to Tokyo you’d try to make an impact there.
‘It’s a very young team. There’s a bit of experience in there too that will help the younger ones, but we’re looking to build. It’s a good team that’s developing and we’d like to make an impact at the Olympic Games,’ he said.