Parson Cross Amateur Boxing Club

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Members of the Parson Cross Amateur Boxing Club Training in 2002.

Images reproduced by kind permission of Parson Cross Amateur Boxing Club.

"One night in [my] local pub …. [I] asked the landlord if it was possible to start a raffle to form a boxing club in our area, and he was delighted to help. A set of rules was set up and the first one was that if we could not get premises in the first twelve month then any money would be donated to the children's hospital."

"Our group tried every means possible to get premises from the local church halls to the council. We attended local public meetings, but when attending our plight seemed to fall on deaf ears. We were told that we … didn't have the inner city problems that other areas had."

"One day [I] hit on the idea of trying to prove that this area did have problems, and that people who were telling us otherwise didn't even live in our area. So how did they know, or more to the point did they care? So [I] asked the little group to collect all the glue bags from the back of the shops and the local pub and down in what the local people call the little woods."

"At the next public meeting … we went armed with the proof that [the area] was suffering the same problems of other areas. The chairman tried to fob us off again telling us that no such problems existed, and that the meeting in progress was for planting trees and grass and had nothing to do with people's concern over youth."

"One of our committee members saw the opportunity so he tipped the glue bags over the chairman's drawings. The chairman lost his cool and demanded that the glue bags be removed. We told him that if no problems existed in our area then there were no glue bags to remove."

"A police officer who was on duty this particular night also asked us to remove the glue bags telling us that he had sympathy, but it was wrong what we were doing. We refused again to remove the bags."

"Then a young lady who was attending the meeting on behalf of the council asked us to remove the bags…and after the meeting we would have a private meeting with her…At this meeting we explained our intentions and she gave us a number to phone the next day at the Town Hall. On ringing her she offered us use of the very hall that the meeting had been held in the previous night for three nights per week."

"We trained in the school hall for about eight months [and then got new premises in a couple of disused classrooms]. In the past twenty years we've achieved a lot. We've had many schoolboy champions - Junior ABA Champions, NABC Champions and full ABA Champions at both local and national level."

"In 1988…we brought a French team over to box…It was fantastic. We were drawing 4-4 when light heavyweight and local hero Steve Dobson stepped into the ring. Steve brought the house down by beating the Frenchman on points in a thrilling contest."

"[A] team from America brought with them Jake Lamotta as a special guest. Jake did us proud at the interval. He entered the ring and told the audience about his life experiences. He told them that he fought Sugar Ray Robinson so many times he thought he had diabetes. The audience was in stitches."

"Boxing is pastime that's not for the faint hearted. It's a sport that demands a lot of physical exercise. It also gives people self-discipline and respect for others."

"Amateur boxing has now taken on a new dimension. It now allows females to take part in this male dominated sport. …[It is] a delight to watch. All I can say is that you've done a great job girls in showing us males that women can take part and boxing shouldn't be dominated by males."

Bob Wright

Memory Leaves which might be of interest:

  Training at the Boxing Club