FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT
Francie Barrett reflects on his career and long battle against discrimination
CHICK was a legend,’ Francie Barrett warmly proclaims from his London home as he remembers his charismatic mentor, Michael ‘Chick’ Gillen, who passed away last month. You can sense Barrett’s smile over the phone as he recalls the old bus his father drove around the country for the Olympic boxing club, Chick in the middle of the craic with the boxers and, more often than not, conducting it.
‘John Paul Delaney used to sit up near the front and one of the first things Chick would say on any journey was “do you have a song for us, John Paul?”, because he had a great voice. That would be the start of it.
‘Chick knew that boxing was just a sport. Win or lose, when we were back on that bus, he made sure we were having fun.
‘My father would drive to Derry or Cork, we wouldn’t be back in Galway till two or three in the morning and there would still be singing and laughing on the bus.’
It was difficult to watch dementia take hold of his old coach in the past few years.
‘It was very sad in the end and I found it very hard, to be honest. It wasn’t the Chick everyone remembered, so full of life and jolly. I would end up getting very emotional any time I visited him.’
When Barrett became the first traveller to represent Ireland at the Olympics, Gillen was the most famous barber in the country, his shop on Galway’s Dominick Street a hive of media activity.
The unbreakable bond between coach and boxer is captured beautifully in Liam McGrath’s wonderful documentary, Southpaw but Gillen’s good-natured demeanour masked a deep reservoir of boxing knowledge. Barrett was just one of more than two dozen national champions that he nurtured.
‘He made me the boxer I was, without a doubt,’ Barrett states. ‘When I first went to him, I was this small, heavy lad, didn’t look up to much. Chick saw something in me, as he did for so many young fellas. And it was Chick who made me believe that I could go to the Olympics. When I was 15, the time Michael Carruth won gold, he told me that if I kept working hard and kept listening to what he said, I would go far.’
Four years later, Barrett carried the Tricolour into Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Stadium, waving at Bill Clinton in the crowd. Gillen, though, was on the other side of the Atlantic, unable to leave Galway as his wife, Noírín, was ill with cancer at the time
Barrett didn’t miss Gillen in his opening light-welterweight bout, as he stormed to a record 32-7 victory over Brazil’s Zely Ferreira. He would lose narrowly to the talented Tunisian Fathi Missaoui in his next fight. Missaoui went on to win bronze, something that gnawed at the coach.
‘Chick always said if he was in Atlanta with me, I’d have won a medal. But you can’t dwell on that, I was an Olympian and there isn’t an awful lot of people who can say that.’
The sight of Barrett holding the flag was viewed as a seminal moment, this teenage boxer who grew up on a halting site in Galway a symbol of change that could help to heal centuries of social division, although the significance washed over him.
‘I knew I was the first traveller to represent Ireland at the Olympics, but I was there representing Ireland. I am Irish.
‘What I always thought is that I was representing myself, my family and my country.’
The whole of Galway was behind Barrett before he left. Galway Bay FM paid for two of his brothers to go to Atlanta. There was a civic reception in Eyre Square. It seemed like things were changing for the better, but a few weeks after he came home, it felt like nothing had changed at all.
Barrett and his brother, John, were refused entry into a bar.
It wouldn’t be the last time Barrett faced such discrimination. A few days later, he headed for London where he had secured a job on the building sites.
‘It was about six or seven weeks after the Olympics, myself and the brother were going into this place in Salthill and the bouncer at the door decided we weren’t getting in. After carrying the Irish flag, it wasn’t nice, to be honest, really tough to take.’
Even though he returns to Galway as much as he can, he remains in London, where he works for a security firm, because that’s where his four children live.
When Barrett noticed the Black Lives Matter protests around the world, it crystallised the prejudice against travellers in this country. Even if it hasn’t been fully purged, he reckons the situation is improving. ‘I think things are changing, the attitude towards travellers is changing a bit,’ Barrett believes.
‘There is good and bad in all people and people are starting to see that. Not every traveller is a saint, but not every settled person is a saint, either.
‘People are starting to see that we shouldn’t all be tarred with the same brush. Just because one or two travellers are carrying on in a pub, doesn’t mean that all travellers should be barred. The next two that come in might just want a quiet drink. By all means, bar the ones that carry on but don’t bar them all. There’s good and bad in everyone.’ Boxing has played a part in gradually eroding the bigotry with Barrett blazing a trail that has been followed by the likes of John Joe Nevin and Joe Ward in the IABA High Performance programme, even if he wonders if that has been over-emphasised.
‘People say that, I set this path for others. But John Joe Nevin’s a brilliant boxer, he would have made the Olympics and won a medal whether I was there before him or not.
‘I suppose the thing I did see was more travellers stuck with the sport after I went to the Olympics.’
For all the new ground he broke, there were some hardened attitudes difficult to smash.
In January 2009, on the same day that Barack Obama talked about overcoming racism in his inauguration speech at the White House, Barrett had been scheduled to meet Keith Walker, a British boxing promoter, in a Galway pub to discuss putting on a card in Leisureland, only to be stopped by a bouncer at the door.
He decided to take a stand.
‘That disgusted me. I was going in to a business meeting, trying to put on a boxing show, trying to do something for Galway. And I wasn’t allowed into my meeting because I was a traveller. Keith couldn’t get over it, he’s a Yorkshire man, and he was saying that would never happen over there.
‘I felt let down by it to be honest, and that’s why...of all the places to refuse me. I decided to take a case
of discrimination against them, because it was happening too much. And I won.’
Barrett had big plans for the show. His cousin, Colman, a decent light heavyweight, was headlining and he hoped the night would be a celebration of multiculturalism.
However, only 500 people came through the doors in Salthill. A harsh lesson was learned.
‘I got bitten once and that was enough,’ Barrett, now 43, says of his only foray into promotion.
‘That game will either make or break you and it very nearly broke me. We didn’t get the crowd we thought we’d get at Leisureland.
‘It showed me that to make any money in that game, you need a lot of money behind you. It’s the only way it works.’
Barrett already had experience of the shark-infested waters of professional boxing. He spent five years as a pro in the first half of the noughties, while working on the sites of London at the same time. Digging trenches and laying cable during the day, training in the evening.
Most of his 20 bouts were in the iconic York Hall in Bethnal Green or the Nottingham Arena, where he became European Union superlightweight champion.
He only boxed once on this side of the Irish Sea, on Bernard Dunne’s homecoming show at the National Stadium in 2005. Even though a big-money bout against Ricky Hatton in Pearse Stadium was mooted (Barrett had beaten Hatton in the amateur ranks), nothing materialised.
‘It was never a big dream of mine, the pro game but Frank Warren asked me if I fancied turning and I think he got me at the right time, I had enough of the amateurs. I had lost to Neil Gough and that meant I couldn’t go to the Olympics in Sydney. To this day, I felt that I won that fight but Neil got the decision. I decided enough was enough. But of course, there are plenty of bad decisions in the pro game, too.’
He did have his ambitions in the sport. The year after Atlanta, Barrett wanted to put his name in the record books by winning the ABA British title and IABA Irish title in the same year. He won the British crown but ended up losing in the national seniors on a countback.
‘Again, I thought it was a harsh decision, but these things happen in life,’ he says. But Barrett rests easy at night, knowing he made the most of his talent and has no regrets.
‘There were more talented fighters than me, probably more talented fighters than me in Olympic Boxing Club, but they didn’t have my heart or my hunger and they didn’t work
as hard as me.’ He mentions his older brother, Dermot as being more talented. ‘But he didn’t have the hunger as me and if you don’t have hunger in the ring, you lose interest pretty quickly.’
His two sons, Frankie and Sean, boxed out of Hooks Boxing Blub in Ealing, north London, but both left the sport for different reasons.
‘My older lad, Frankie, boxed for a while. But he didn’t have the hunger I had, and if your heart is not in it, you shouldn’t be doing it.’
Sean was the bigger of the boys and had talent, but gave it up after around a dozen fights because of a health issue.
‘He was feeling faint whenever he stood up quickly and the doctors found a problem with the way the blood was flowing from his head to his legs. He had an operation. That was four years ago and he’s fine now, thank God, but it put an end to the boxing, obviously. I wouldn’t have let him box in the first place if we had known the problem.’
Barrett helped with coaching at Hooks club when his sons were fighting. ‘But I didn’t have the interest to do it when I didn’t have blood involved,’ he says. He doesn’t stay in touch with the scene much these days although along with Martin, his brother, he went to national finals night in the Stadium last year to cheer on their nephews.
‘Whenever I go to the Stadium, loads of people want to come and chat to me. Leaving last year, it took me nearly an hour to get from one end of the stadium to the other, because everyone wanted to come up and chat to me.
‘By the time I got out, Martin was raging. He had been standing in the cold for an hour, waiting for me to come out.
‘But it’s nice, you know, nice for people to remember you like that,’ he says.
Irish boxing is unlikely to forget its young trailblazer from Galway.
‘THAT DISGUSTED ME. I WASN’T ALLOWED IN BECAUSE I WAS A TRAVELLER. I TOOK A CASE AND I WON.