How boxing is helping the Grenfell community fight back
Fifteen months after the tragedy, the renowned Dale Youth Amateur Boxing Club stands proud again with a renovated gym, located in the tower’s shadow in Ladbroke Grove
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Take a look at some of the biggest stories in the world of boxing and what is presented is a perception of what the sport has become. Anthony Joshua beat previously banned drug cheat Alexander Povetkin, who earned tens of millions of pounds from the fight, WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders was fined £100,000 for a ‘sickening’ video of him offering a women drugs, and Tyson Fury continues his war of words with Eddie Hearn and Joshua.
But strip away the lights, the 80,000 fans at Wembley and the millions of pounds that come with being a boxer at the top of the game, and what is left is the core principles of the historic and disciplined sport which at times can appear so disenchanted with its roots.
Boxing has historically been, and still is, a community sport that brings individuals together, especially young people, and teaches them discipline and respect through strict training and professionalism - and there’s nowhere that British boxing’s roots are more embodied than at the rejuvenated Dale Youth boxing club.
The historic club has produced many world champions throughout its 85-year existence, most recently IBF super-middleweight champion James DeGale and World Boxing Super Series finalist George Groves. But for all the many highs, came one harrowing low.
On Wednesday 14 June 2017, Mick Delaney, a coach at the gym of 45 years, had finished a training session at Dale Youth’s base in the Grenfell Tower at 10pm and had made his way home. Two hours and 54 minutes later, the first call to the emergency services was made from the resident in flat 16 on the fourth floor to report that a fire had started in his kitchen.
“I get a phone call at five o’clock in the morning from one of the other coaches who was on his way to work early in the morning,” says Delaney. “He said, ‘Mick I’ve just drove past Grenfell, there’s flames coming out of everywhere, it’s all on fire’. I said ‘You’re joking’. I would never believe it, we were in there that night. Then I’ve got people all over England phoning me up, because everyone knows everyone through boxing, saying ‘I’m sorry about your gym’. I said, ‘No, forget about the gym, [think about] all those people that died, the casualties and families’.”
The club had previously fought adversity by finding refuge in a nursery, bin stores and a car park before briefly residing in Grenfell, but as the flames ravaged their way through the tower, the building and gym was destroyed.
For almost two long days and nights, more than 100 firefighters tackled the blaze that claimed 72 lives, injured 70, brought grief to a nation and devastated a community.
Fifteen months later, and while the Grenfell public inquiry is in full swing, the renowned Dale Youth boxing club stands proud again with a renovated gym, located in the tower’s shadow in Ladbroke Grove. The club was rebuilt by the BBC DIY SOS team and can now continue its legacy to provide a safe and prosperous club for London’s youth.
One man who knows how much a boxing club can do for a community is the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. In his youth, Khan and his brothers attended Earlsfield boxing club - a club his oldest brother, Sid, now coaches at - and said the renovation is the least that Dale Youth deserves.
“A year after the awful tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire when the club was destroyed, you’ve got a fantastic club opening here today and I think they deserve the best,” Khan told The Independent as he officially re-opened the club. “I want to give more young people constructive things to do, not everybody’s going to be an Anthony Joshua, or James DeGale or George Groves.
“What boxing does is give you is life skills: how to be magnanimous in victory, dignified in defeat, and a healthy lifestyle. We’ve got a problem in obesity and overweight kids – how to keep you fit and active. But also, it gives you a family you can be part of, a sense of belonging. You cheer each other on and let’s be frank, you stay out of trouble.” The Mayor nails it. London has a gang crisis which will not be solved overnight, but clubs like Dale Youth, and sports like boxing, can go a long way to improving countless lives across the capital in the unique way that only sport can.
“I’d rather people joined this gang, a lawful gang, a gang that gives you life skills rather than a gang that’s a criminal gang,” he added.
Former Chelsea captain and England international Dennis Wise was in attendance – to present the invigorated club with a minibus – and knows as well as anyone the power of sport to transform communities. His two sons are both involved in boxing at Dale Youth; his eldest boxed in the Grenfell Tower gym, and Wise said the community is using sport to continue living in a ‘wonderful’ atmosphere.
“You can focus and be involved in sport, I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s something that can help people, it takes your mind off of things,” he told The Independent. “There’re some really good young boxers from this area in that gym, it’s a lovely and disciplined environment to be in. It really is lovely for everyone to pull together and do the right thing. It’s sad what happened, it really is.”
What is striking about the grand opening is the overwhelming sense of communal excitement and optimism for the future. This is a community which had the potential to be utterly defeated in a tragedy of such earth-shattering horror, but it has shown strength in its resilience and determination to return and come back stronger.
The Dale Youth chairman, Graham Gater, summed it up nicely when he said that the club strives to be the “social glue of the community” as it coaches Britain’s future stars, as well as those who are enjoying an evening in a safe local environment.
Every boxing gym has their prized asset, usually a man-mountain that claims Hearn and Joshua are running scared, but at the grand opening in September, there was a very different prospect being touted. Heavyweight Daniel Dubois, who has a professional record of eight wins from as many contests, was paraded as the next star from the gym, but it was nine-year-old Mason Friend that had most people talking.
“It’s nice to see your friends and you can go and communicate with them and come out of your comfort zone,” Friend said as he begins to learn boxing’s disciplined and cohesive teachings. “(The coaches) Gary, Joe and Steve are all spot on, they’re just amazing.”
Mason is one of 100 young people that regularly attend the gym and learn a way of life that will see him mature into a sensible and dignified individual thanks to a warm boxing community to support him.
Mick Crossan, the Dale youth president and chairman of Powerday, who helped fund and organise the rebuild, knows all too well about the adversity that life can bring to young Londoners that stray from boxing’s code. “We’ve got a couple of mothers who unfortunately their children have been stabbed to death,” he said.
“We bring them in so youngsters can actually see the devastation it leaves to their mothers and remind everyone else in the community. It can only be good for boxing in London and hopefully, these clubs are changing children’s lives.” Powerday sponsors a number of boxing clubs across London and carries the slogan ‘drop the knife, pick up a glove’ to convince young people to make the right choices.
This is not to say that boxing is solely responsible for guiding adolescents or communities to a more prosperous life, nor is it right to assume that elite boxers have completely lost touch with the values of the sport, but there is something touching about the power of a collection of individuals who can come together and produce something that is going to positively influence so many lives.
The Grenfell disaster shattered a community, but through sport and boxing’s communal emphasis, Dale Youth personifies the admirable resilience and determination to rebuild and come back stronger. Sport has a unique power to be able to change lives for the better, and in its simplicity, it can be quite beautiful to be a part of.
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