SPORTING PASSIONS BILLY WALSH:The former Olympic boxer and now head of Irish boxing's High Performance Unit, tell JOHNNY WATTERSONabout his Croke Park experience.

I SUPPOSE my background outside of boxing was in Wexford GAA. I went to the local CBS school in Wexford town and playing GAA was all part of the school curriculum. Brother Dormer was the man who took us back then. He was only 19-years-old when he was teaching me, just a kid but he was involved in absolutely everything in the school.

The local club was Sarsfields (football), but then I joined Faythe Harriers (hurling) when I was 13. We played in the Leinster finals in 1977 in Croke Park at under-14. It was a fantastic experience to play there even though it was not a quarter full. As a boy Croke Park was a special place just the way Wembley is for soccer. There was a great buzz that day.

We managed to get back there four years later with the minor team and we played against Kilkenny. But they beat us by a point that day and I remember throwing down my hurl in disgust and said that I was just going to box. I didn’t want to have to rely on 14 other guys.

I knew the next Olympic Games would be in Los Angeles in 1984 and that would be my focus. I was annoyed because in that match we were five points up with six minutes to go and we lost it. That was not a great feeling. In fact it was a total sickener.

So I put all of my efforts into the boxing. I was the national champion back then but even so I wasn’t selected for the LA Olympic Games and I was devastated. Back then in boxing there was a lot of politics involved in picking teams and in deciding who went where. I was a country boy and I’d no one in the corridors pulling for me. Thankfully that has changed now and everybody gets selected now purely on merit.

But I didn’t get selected for the Olympics that summer and decided to go back and to play with Sarsfields in 1984.

We won the county senior football championship and the Harriers got to the final of the hurling championships. So I played with the clubs when I had time and I also went boxing. In those days in boxing there was actually an off -season, although that’s not the case now.

In 1993 I was brought on to the Wexford senior panel. But by that time I’d started a new business. I was around 28 or 29 years old at that stage and the timing of it just didn’t suit. I just couldn’t stick it with the time and the commitment required to do it properly.

I would have loved to have played senior hurling for Wexford, but you have to be at it all the time.

In hurling you can’t just pick it up for three months and expect to be as good as you were the summer before. I’d always wanted to do it but hurling is a very skilful game when it’s played well and you just have to work at it all the time.

Later in life I got a real love for the football. I suppose the skills and the physicality suited me better. I’m still passionate about Gaelic games and I’ve been to every All-Ireland final since 1990. All my mates are the hurlers and footballers I used play with and my garden backs on to Wexford GAA Park. Hop over the wall and you’re into the ground.

I found that the football and hurling complemented my boxing training and I was able to maintain a good level of fitness. I was never badly out of shape. I think it’s important to play a variety of sports and then choose when you are around 18 years old. It’s important for things such as skill, balance, co-ordination, agility.

In the end the sport chose me, I didn’t choose the sport. I was the Irish champion in boxing but I was chasing Leinster titles in football and hurling.

Now when I look at GAA I definitely see a difference in the set-up and structures. You think back and you think you were brilliant but you’re blinded by time. It’s hard to compare then with now. But it is better in respect of players being educated about how their bodies work. There’s more science in the package.

Some counties aren’t up to Kilkenny in hurling or Tyrone and Kerry in football. Obviously those counties have a system that works and they can roll out the talent every season. Other counties need to take a leaf out of that book, see how they do things. Then maybe they can start to move up to that level.

Walsh represented Ireland at the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988. He is currently head coach in the sport’s High Performance Unit and was Irish coach in Beijing last year when Ireland brought home three Olympic medals.