WHY WE LEFT
Fitzroy Lodge explain why they felt compelled to join the Alliance. Nick Bond reports
AS one of the country’s most respected amateur boxing clubs, Fitzroy Lodge has been conspicuous by their absence from the national governing body’s championships for the past few seasons.
Alongside the likes of Dale Youth, Lynn AC, Finchley, Broad Street and many more they defected to the Amateur Boxing Alliance two years ago. The Alliance is spearheaded by the London ABA’S Keith Walters and Ted Goreham with several clubs from the Western, Home and Southern Counties.
The backstory has been detailed on these pages recently, but the Alliance appears to be born out of disillusionment with the national governing body – England Boxing. For example the Alliance insist that headguards are mandatory for all competing boxers.
They have have been quietly active with their own shows – 73 last season. With The Lodge holding several dinners show, recently on October 18 at the Grange City Hotel in Tower Hill.
How was it different to the equivalent show under the England Boxing banner of a few years ago? Well, aside from the boxers wearing headguards, on the surface very little has changed.
There is still the well-matched bouts. The same volunteers running the clubs. The same officials and medical staff.
The grievance clearly lives beneath the surface, possibly born out of miscommunication.
“The England Boxing hierarchy were distant from the clubs and had little or no interaction with them,” says the Lodge’s Keith Herschell. “They were bowing to the edicts of AIBA, and bringing in rules which we disagreed with, amongst them moving closer to the professional sport, removing the word ‘Amateur’, removal of headguards, resulting in an increase of boxers getting facial cuts, and we believed that under EB there was a general lowering of the duty of care towards our boxers.”
“The articles of association were changed at the insistence of Sport England, which took away all democratic rights of clubs. It is widely believed England Boxing intended removing power from the regional associations and disbanding the council.”
Herschell added: “The finances that Sport England were putting into EB were not reaching the clubs.”
“The Alliance is run by people who are actively involved with grass roots boxing clubs, who genuinely care about the sport and run the Alliance in a very democratic way. Any club can speak to the people who run it.”
“Since the split, EB have given their backing to white collar boxing, which we believe devalues the sport, and adds to the reasons as to why we think it was the right decision to split.”
What is clear is a divide in amateur boxing is good for nobody. Hopefully the channels of communication can open and the grass roots of the sport can find a way to move forward united.