AMATEURS
As Mick Driscoll wins Europe’s coach of the year award, the young England boxing team has become a force to be reckoned with
English boxing’s quiet revolution
AQUIET revolution has been underway in English amateur boxing. Never before has the England team been so consistently successful at Youth and Junior level. In 2018 alone England Boxing Talent Programme boxers won 34 international medals (12 gold, nine silver and 13 bronze), That rises to 38 if you include the four medals won by England Youth boxers for Team GB at the Youth Olympic Games. 144 different boxers represented England last year, with 95 different individual clubs providing the athletes. 2018 was also significant in that medal haul was split equally across both male and female boxers.
The achievement has been marked in Europe. Mick Driscoll, England Boxing’s performance coach, became the first Englishman to win coach of the year at the EUBC awards. He works with the England Schools, Junior and Youth teams.
“It’s amazing,” he told Boxing News. “For me it’s a fantastic achievement for England boxing.”
“But I’m just the face of a fantastic team that we’ve assembled in England and they’ve turned things around, concentrating more on performance, on preparation,” he continued. “I’m just at the front of a great team and if I’m being honest you’ve got to put all the credit down to the boxers for going out and giving England boxing three of the best years it’s ever had.”
But now, Driscoll noted, “It’s like Leicester winning the Premier League, we’ve got to sustain it.”
Before he joined the international full-time set up Driscoll was a coach in the highly successful West Ham amateur boxing club, under the guidance of the legendary Micky May.
“It’s trying to put across what I got from West Ham, that team ethos, that team mentality, where sometimes I don’t think you’ve got that with England. Kids put a vest on and think they’ve already done it. We’re trying to crack that in the preparation camps with mind games and
‘WE’VE GOT A FANTASTIC CLUB SYSTEM AND WE’VE GOT FANTASTIC BOXERS’
building the team so when a kid puts on that vest they believe now that they can do it,” Driscoll said. “One of my biggest mentors in life was Micky May.
“It’s that self-belief, that’s a big thing, that’s a massive thing, especially for Schools, Juniors and Youths, and if a coach can give you that, that’s unbelievable. You’re already halfway there... Build as a team and not have an ego.”
Thinking of England’s progress, he added, “People were laughing [years ago] saying you’re never going to compete with the Russians, you’re never going to do this, never going to do that. Why not? Cuba’s a very small nation, they’re one of the best in the world. Why can’t we be? We’ve got a fantastic club system, we’ve got fantastic boxers and there’s no reason why we can’t compete with the best in the world and we’re proving it.
“Out of every single sport that went out to the Youth Olympics [for GB] we’re the only that got gold medals and [in the boxing event] we lost on whisker to the Russians coming first: they got three golds and a silver, we got three golds and a bronze. The fact that we’ve pulled in 38 medals in a season is phenomenal.
“We got six medals in the European Youths, we got six medals in the World Youths. We got four medals [from English boxers] in the Youth Olympics, that comes under GB. But then we’ve got 12 medals for the Juniors, which is a record, most medals ever got by an England team, 12 medals at a tournament, and then we got 10 at the Schools.
“It’s just having that mindset and believing that you can do it. It’s a big thing in boxing. It’s a big thing.”
He was quick to pay tribute to the clubs across the UK and as part of the changes he brought to the set up Driscoll has taken the England squad to different gyms for sparring and for the first time entered an England team into the Haringey Box Cup. He wants the squad overall to be a positive experience for its young athletes.
“We try to put no pressure on a boxer at all. We try to have a fun camp, a happy camp. Happy boxers make successful boxers. We try to put across it’s not about winning medals, it’s about the performance. If you can take care of the performance, the medals will follow,” he said.
“If you put that across to the boxers from a young age there’s no pressure. We’re a happy team. We’re a confident team. It’s down to the performance and the medals will follow.”
England’s success at Youth and Junior levels bodes well for the future of the elite GB team too. “We’re trying to create self-thinking boxers that can go out and take ownership for themselves,” Driscoll said. “They’re getting that specialist treatment. I’ve made a promise to all of them. We stipulate whether you’re a Schoolboy now, a Junior now or a Youth now, in your final year as a Youth or going into your first year as a senior, if you’re not on the [GB] World Class programme, we’ve failed in our job.”
“The boxers,” he notes, “come first and foremost.”