AMATEURS
Mark Reigate speaks about life with the famous club to John Dennen
The divide that has rocked boxing
FITZROY LODGE is a special club. It’s an institution in London, one of the longest running clubs in the country and Mark Reigate, who has devoted himself to the gym, is keeping its legacy alive.
Reigate had over 100 amateur contests himself and, instead of turning professional, became a coach and then head coach at the Lodge. There as a boxer first even now he remembers walking through the black doors of the gym. He knew it was a unique place. “To me it was like Narnia when you walk into the wardrobe and it opens up,” he recalled. “When you get noticed everything changes, people come up and start saying hello to you, who you don’t even know.”
“I had 102 bouts in the end,” he continued. “I thought I was going to carry on boxing forever and ever… You’ve also got to be realistic about what you can and can’t do.”
One of the highlights of his boxing career was Mick Carney, the great coach of the club, organising a special show for his 100th contest. “I got to 100 bouts, right at the end, Mick made a really big thing for me, because I’d been down at the club for a long time, he did it as my own show, sold loads of tickets,” Mark said.
Then he began to help with coaching other boxers himself. “Helping out, I realised how much time people put into you, how much effort that they do,” he said. “I’m lucky really because I’ve learned
off one of the best people in amateur boxing or boxing full stop... You don’t realise what people do for you.”
Mick Carney passed away seven years ago and is terribly missed within the sport.
“Now I’ve taken over the gym I have to think before I do something. Plus there’s Mick’s legacy to look after, you realise how big the club is. The same morals and everything else, which he’s basically taught me, everything that’ll be taught to every kid in the gym,” Mark said.
Becoming head coach after Mick passed away, Reigate had to take to step into a new role. “You always need someone in the club, you’ve all got to follow off one person [because] what’ll happen is pandemonium where everyone’s doing different things. You’re not working together,” he explained.
It is a tremendous legacy to uphold. “We were also taught down here that everybody who walks through those doors is exactly the same. No one is better than this person and this person’s not better than that person. Everybody is the same. Black, white, Asian. Whatever religion you are. Whatever ability you are. You come down here, Mick tells you what to do, you do it. You don’t do it, go to another club, find another club and do it. Those are the rules and that’s what is expected of you,” Mark said. “In my view you’ve got amateur boxing clubs all over London, all over England, really the amount of youth work that amateur boxing clubs do is unbelievable.”
A boxing club teaches discipline and control, often to young people who need it. Reigate learned a lesson in the first spar he ever had. “I threw a punch as hard as I could, didn’t realise there was an etiquette of control,” he remembered. “I hit him as hard as I could, he staggered back, I looked at him and thought this is easy. Then he looked at me as if to say right you’re going to get it now and absolutely battered me. By the end of it, I was in the corner with my leg up, thinking wow I’m not as good as I think I am or as hard. It turned out the fella was Wayne Alexander.”
Fitzroy Lodge is now no longer a member of England Boxing, having joined the breakaway group the Amateur Boxing Alliance (see below).
Clubs like Fitzroy Lodge though are important. Reigate has done outreach work himself and now the club does it through the charity it set up in memory of Mick, Carney’s Community. It’s a major commitment of time and effort. “All the groundwork is done at a boxing club, like here, and we’re the ones that give up all our time for the amateur boxing, for that kid to do whatever he’s going to do and represent his country, maybe go and win a gold medal or whatever, yet nothing’s still coming back to this club,” he said.
“All I want to do, like every boxing club, is make sure this is the best boxing club for kids coming out and achieving something, maybe achieving something where in the future, like an Anthony Joshua, it changes their life and hopefully they can change someone else’s life. That’s what you want, that’s all you want to see and all you want to do.”