Matt Maher: Why is boxing having to take such a big hit during Covid?

October marked two decades since the Brierley Hill-based club first opened its doors.

“We had a big party planned, the works,” explains head coach Kevin Dillon. “Of course, all that has had to be postponed, to who knows when?

“When you think back to a year ago when we would be out at competitions every weekend. I remember joking to my wife I needed a rest but I only meant a week, not eight or nine months!”

Like every other amateur boxing club across the region, the Lions have been operating on a drastically-reduced capacity during the pandemic.

To walk into their Bull Street gym prior to March was to discover the heartbeat of a community. The club counts nearly 1,000 members, some from as far afield as Shropshire. On any given night Dillon and his coaching staff could be tutoring up to 100 boxers, aged anywhere between six and 60.

Understandably things are very different. Though boxing clubs were allowed to reopen earlier this month following the end of the second national lockdown, there remains strict restrictions on what they can do. Class sizes have had to be slashed. Venues alive with noise just a few months ago no longer have the same buzz.

“It’s been really tough,” says Dillon. “I’d say the lockdown we have just come out of was much harder than the first.

“In the first it felt like everyone was in it together. The second there were some places still allowed to open while the gym remained closed. What we really need right now is a bit of guidance and a bit of support. It doesn’t really feel like we are getting that.”

That sense of being left out in the cold was further heightened when boxing was last month omitted from the government’s £300million rescue package for sport.

For clubs like the Lions or Dudley’s Priory Park, the announcement was a disappointment, though not particularly a surprise. Yet for other, smaller clubs, the lack of support may be fatal.

“Some clubs will simply cease to exist,” says Paul Gough, head coach at Priory Park. “You are already hearing stories of some clubs folding, not in the Midlands thankfully but nationally.

“They simply don’t have the resources to carry on. You realise there is only a certain amount of money to round. But you do wonder whether it is always going to the right places. Boxing never seems to get the recognition it deserves.”

The biggest issue may be a lack of appreciation for the work boxing clubs actually do. At a base level they are, as the name suggests, training bases for promising fighters. Yet in reality they are so much more than that. Frequently they are havens for those society has forgotten. Few other places possess the power to transform lives quite like a boxing club.

Just ask Anthony Joshua, the reigning world heavyweight champion, who speaks regularly about how his life changed the day he walked into London’s Finchley ABC. “Go and talk to Anthony about what boxing did for him and where he’d be without boxing – in prison, dead, anything,” Joshua’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, recently remarked.

“These clubs make people understand how to behave, they give them discipline, they give them some kind of regiment into their lifestyle.

“It’s not about trying to inspire the next generation into becoming a world champion, it’s about shaping the next generation and making sure that they can go on and achieve and be good people and serve well within their community.”

Joshua might be a high-profile example but Dillon and Gough know the stories of lives being turned around are endless.

“I think sometimes people on the outside only see the boxing and are under the impression we are teaching hooligans to fight,” says Dillon.

“But we are actually encouraging them not to fight. We are teaching them to box and have that self-worth, that self-belief.

“Amateur boxing is more than just two people in the ring. It’s about a community and the love and support you get from that. It is one big family.

“It’s a place where everyone is treated equally. It doesn’t matter how much money they have got in the bank, what their religious beliefs are or where they are living. It gives people a family. It is a bit of light for people, a bit of support. If the rest of the country was like our clubs, it would be a better place.”

Though the clubs might have been quieter in recent months, they have not been silent. Dillon set up a WhatsApp group early in the first lockdown, which has been used for home training programmes and to send messages of support to members who might be struggling. Together with other coaches he also hosts a popular podcast, The Black Country Blokes, which focuses on mental health issues.

At Priory Park, meanwhile, Gough has continued to carry out sessions for pupil referral unit (PRU) schools. He has recently explored the possibility of the club housing its own PRU facility and believes over the next few months and years, as the economic reality of the pandemic bites, the work of his club and others will only become more valuable.

“I think we are heading for a very difficult period,” says Gough. “Anti-social behaviour is only going to increase and there are likely to be fewer boxing clubs to help put these kids on the right track.

“It is not as though people are asking for the earth.

“They just want a bit of support.”