Joe

Could you take us back for a moment?

I suspect it's something you're asked about a lot, but just to, for younger listeners even, because, you know, time is flying by.

Post the Sydney Games in 2000, the Irish government, I mean, the sporting world at large, recognised that we as a country had fallen massively behind.

And so a degree of funding came into Olympic sport.

One of those sports, I think there were three or four initially, I know, rowing, I think sailing as well, possibly athletics sport.

But boxing certainly was earmarked as one of the sports where we could really get our act together and the funding could bear dividends.

And so you, I guess, being a performance director as such alongside Billy Walsh and from kind of 02 territory to 08 really got that thing off the ground.

Can you tell us about that?

This isn't meant to be like a pointed question.

What qualified you to do all this?

Nothing.

So interesting.

Anytime I listen to any of the boxers talk about those early years, it seems like the place was just pumping with energy.

There was kind of magic in the air.

And as you've detailed, you know, it was thought out and it was structured and there was an intelligence behind it.

But I sense from the boxes like almost a giddiness about the whole thing, like a wonderful time.

Yeah.

So, I mean, you could have stayed there for life, I suspect, and you very much didn't.

And you went to work with, we'll call it now the Sport Ireland.

It was Irish Institute of Sport, Sport Ireland Institute for a long time.