YOUNG Bradley McDonagh eats, drinks and sleeps boxing. He rarely misses his daily workout and training run, in or around the Golf Links Road in Ennis. Just to prove the point, he captured his second Irish title in the National Stadium in Dublin recently.
The championships are the Mecca for all juvenile boxers throughout the country. Their season is geared towards the grand finale.
Clare clubs have a great tradition in these championships but titles are so hard to come by, with weight management, fitness attainment and injury control in the run-up to the tests.
Bradley, who is an Ennis Boys National School pupil, came through county and provincial championships, having made the move up from his comfort zone of 54k with relative ease.
He was pleased to get a bye into the semi-finals when the draws were made. He drew Connacht champion Stephen Maughan from Mayo and he duly disposed of the Mayo boxer on Thursday with an emphatic first round display of accurate punching.
His final opponent was Ulster champion, Ben Bannon, from the Holy Family Club in Belfast. McDonagh used his speed and accurate left jab to build up a formidable lead against the onrushing Bannon.
The signs were good for the Ennis lad but he seemed to take a time-out in the second and the Belfast fighter came back with a vengeance, to claim parity.
However, McDonagh called on all his resources in the third and all of his vast repertoire of left and right hooks rained on Bannon as he came forward and the Ennis fighter was on his way to victory .
The Ennis youngster will now take a brief rest before going into training for the Home Internationals in June and will then hope to set his sights on
A native of Ennis, Colin McGann has been editor of The Clare Champion since August 2020. Former editor of The Clare People, he is a journalism and communications graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology.