LIAM Corr can still remember the first time he saw John Paul Hale walking through the doors of the cramped Star gym - a small, skinny kid, just like hundreds of others who have come and gone through the decades.
In the final throes of his own career between the ropes, under the watchful eye of dad Mickey, Corr’s focus then was on the here and now rather than the future of the New Lodge club. That would come in time.
But what he knew of Hale, at the very least, was the quiet seven-year-old had some pedigree. Around the late 1990s, Hale’s uncle Jimbo Rooney had reigned supreme as the light-flyweight king of Ulster and Ireland and was destined for a top pro career until injury intervened.
Indeed, Rooney’s son Louis is another of the leading lights among the club’s current crop, claiming the Irish U18 46kg crown at just 16 back in January. Liam Corr was in Rooney’s corner at the National Stadium, and he will be in JP Hale’s corner when the Commonwealth Games begin in Birmingham later this month.
Until a first Irish elite title propelled him into the High Performance set-up last year, Hale had never known boxing without Corr by his side. In the years when he was still trying his hand at football with Cliftonville’s underage teams, the doors of the Star remained open, even if the noble art had never really been on the young man’s radar.
“My daddy brought me round first, boxing’s always been around the family but I didn’t watch much,” admits the 20-year-old, “I started watching Manny Pacquiao when I was about 12 but, boxing , I dunno, it was just… something to do. Go round and see your mates.”
“I was coming to the end of my career and he was just starting out on his,” smiles Corr, “he always had the same tenacity from a very young age, always had that power and that bit of brawn.
“Obviously he’s carried that on up to elite level, but it works in waves - every club throughout the city’s the same. You can go through a good patch, which we probably are at the minute, then you can hit a slump.
“The next batch of kids mightn’t be as good as the ones you’ve got at the minute. That’s just the way it goes sometimes.”
From then to now, it has been quite a journey for cub and coach.
And Hale’s road to this point was anything but smooth sailing, with bumps on the road along the way only strengthening his resolve to shine.
There were setbacks at Ulster level as he struggled to break through the provincial class ceiling, until missing out on selection for the 2017 Commonwealth Youth Games in the Bahamas left Hale standing at a crossroads.
“That was a real turning point,” says Corr.
“I just saw a wee change in his attitude, he was training harder, doing the extra bits…”
“It was heartbreaking,” adds Hale, “but it made me more determined.
“I was 16… I never considered leaving boxing or anything, it didn’t get under my skin that way - it just made me more hungry for it.”
And when Hale did eventually move into the senior ranks, he did so with a bang.
His 2019 Ulster final showdown against Colm Murphy had everything, bringing the Ulster Hall to its feet as the two young guns emptied the tank. When the same pair reached the bantamweight decider at the following year’s championships, reputation saw them placed at the head of a stacked bill – and they didn’t disappoint, Hale having his hand raised for a second time, but not before thrilling the famous old venue with another war.
“People still talk about that fight to this day,” says Hale, whose younger brother Tiarnan is following in his footsteps.
“JP had a lot of hard finals on the way up,” adds Corr, “he didn’t win his first Ulster championship until 2017 in the Falls Leisure Centre. He’d been beat in three or four finals before that, and lost a few close decisions in All-Irelands too.
“The the first year we put him into the Ulster elites, we were honest with him. We sat down with him as a coaching team and said ‘listen, this is a gamble, we’re throwing you in here, we don’t expect anything straightaway’.
“But, at the same time, we wouldn’t have put him in if we didn’t think he could handle it, and he went and won them, with probably one of the best finals we’ve seen in recent years. Him and Colm really pushed each other on.”
Since then, he hasn’t looked back. Taking the Irish lightweight crown last September was perfect timing at the beginning of a new Olympic cycle, and Hale has experienced both World and European Championships in a relatively short space of time – with the Commonwealths ticking off another box.
For fighter and coach to go to the same Games is special, no doubt, though Corr insists his only concern was that Hale was Birmingham-bound. Anything else was bonus territory.
“One hundred per cent. The coaching team was asked before the boxers were even picked, and I was sort of in two minds… not in two minds because I didn’t want to go, obviously I’m over the moon to be asked, but it was more important that he was on the team than me. That was my view on it, and I put that out from the start.
“It’s a big moment because we sat down a couple of years ago and worked out a timeline, it’s written on the back of a door in his daddy’s house. World Championships, Europeans, Commonwealth Games, Olympics… apart from the Olympics he’s ticked them all off.
“That’s the mindset he was in himself when we sat down and spoke about where he wanted to go, he was very mature about it. These things don’t happen overnight, but he deserves to be here now.
“Even in the last year, he’s come on leaps and bounds. The High Performance has only fine tuned and added to that talent. Yes, people saw his fights with Murphy, everybody knows he can fight, but he can box too.
“We’ve always known he has that, it’s just up to him knowing when to switch that on – knowing when to fight, when to box. He’s got both sides of the coin.
“The last boxer from our club to go the Commonwealths was Gerard McAuley in Manchester, 2002… I was only a kid watching him. This is a huge achievement, not just for us going, but for the whole club.
“We’re a team at the end of the day, so it’s great for all of us – especially getting him across the line. He knows he’s at this level now, he knows he can compete with anyone.”
