BILLY Walsh knows a fair bit about the art of communication – but it was a lesson he had to learn the hard way.
Before becoming one of the most important coaches in Irish sporting history, Walsh shared the same hopes and dreams as those who would come under his charge in the decades after his gloves had been hung up.
Hurling was always in his heart, but boxing triggered something in him that nothing else could; mostly for better, sometimes for worse, leading him on a rollercoaster journey both inside and outside the ropes.
The Olympics first became a realistic ambition when watching Hugh Russell claim bronze at Moscow 1980. Working as an apprentice fitter, his boss walked through the factory floor before asking Walsh why he wasn’t there.
Just turned 17, it was too soon – but Los Angeles four years down the track? That would be his time. And so, as that Olympic cycle neared its end, Walsh found himself in a battle with Kieran Joyce for the welterweight spot.
Back then, Irish teams were often selected by a handful of key figures in the Irish Athletic Boxing Association (IABA). The 20-year-old from Wexford was already starting to worry.
“The powers that be sat around a table, they had all done their deals before they went in there - the Belfast boys were voting for the Cork boys, the Cork boys were voting for the Dublin boys, or whatever way it worked.
“I was a country boy… I had no support.”
Still, he trained and he trained in the hope the call would come, murdering himself to get down to the 63.5 kilo limit his body was fast outgrowing. No matter how heavily the odds were stacked against, Walsh was determined to wring out every last ounce of sweat in his bid to follow in Hugh Russell’s footsteps.
Eventually, word came through - but it wasn’t via face-to-face meeting, or by phone call. Not even a letter.
“You know how I found out?” he spits, anger still bubbling 40 years on.
“I was on the f**king treadmill in the gym and the radio was on, playing music. Then on the hour the news comes on, followed by the sport - ‘the Irish boxing team has just been announced for the 1984 Olympic Games…’”
Walsh, weary legs pumping in a sweat suit, slams stop and steps off the machine. One by one the names are reeled off; his is not among them. Standing in an empty gym, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“I know there’s a saying ‘I heard it on the radio’ - well I f**king did.”
Done with boxing, Walsh went back to the GAA, helping Sarsfield’s to the Wexford SFC and going on to represent his county in both codes. But eventually the pull proved too strong. He got back in the ring and earned a spot at Seoul ‘88, before losing out to eventual gold medallist Michael Carruth for a second Olympic crack in Barcelona four years later.
Yet it is as a coach that Walsh has made his name. An integral part of a new high performance unit established in the Noughties, Ireland emerged as a major force in world boxing – collecting a slew of Olympic medals as a host of general talents, Katie Taylor among them, came to the fore.
A fall out with the IABA would eventually see Walsh offered the chance to rejuvenate America’s ailing fortunes in the amateur ranks; and he did just that, being named world coach of the year in 2016.
Now 61, he has no intention of stopping, Los Angeles 2028 offering an irresistible chance for redemption. Because that day - the treadmill, the sweatsuit, the radio, the world slowing to a stop – proved a fork in the road, and an inadvertent first step on the road that would follow.
“That’s why, throughout my career, if there’s bad news to be given, we sit down face to face and I give it to them.
“Nobody finds out by telegram, or email, or the radio, because it devastated me. Those things change peoples’ lives. What you say, how you talk to people - the way you talk to people - can be every bit as important as what you show them in the gym.”
The importance of communication has been increasingly evident at Manchester United, where Marcus Rashford looks to be edging ever closer to the exit door.
Discussion around Rashford’s future is nothing new, his performances over the last few years a study in how to look like you couldn’t give a care, even if that surely can’t be the case.
Erik ten Hag dropped him after an ill-advised night out at Thompson’s during a trip to Belfast. Rashford, as well as other United players, have also been disciplined for arriving late to training, sleeping in; the kind of things you suspect should be the absolute bare minimum for any elite athlete.
But the Dutchman’s brusque manner often led to those incidents escalating, rather than being nipped in the bud.
Before a camera, Ten Hag was a rabbit in the headlights, eyes juddering like a character from a Manga movie as he tried to formulate a response in less than perfect English. His body language was stiff, his press conferences stilted and stern, even if journalists talk of a lighter side away from the media glare.
The contrast with his successor, Ruben Amorim, could hardly be more stark. The Portuguese is loose and easy of manner but, crucially, delivers a clear and considered message when he speaks. Those are priceless commodities when, off the pitch, chaos often reins at Old Trafford.
While dropping Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho from Sunday’s squad to face Manchester City was a huge decision, knowing the attention that would bring, Amorim defused the situation in impression fashion; conviction and conciliation all at once.
Even when Rashford indicated his future could lie away from United days later, Amorim said all the right things, in exactly the right manner; letting the 27-year-old know that he remains master of his own destiny - what direction he chooses is up to him.
A teenage Billy Walsh would have appreciated such clarity instead of being left alone, staring at a pool of sweat on the floor, and the shattered pieces of an Olympic dream.
