Matt from Your Herefordshire popped over to the South Wye Police Boxing Academy which is situated at the Hinton Community Centre on Ross Road.
The academy is run by Vince McNally. Vince moved to Hereford in the early 90’s after working for the forces. He told Your Herefordshire: “I moved to the city in 1992 and became involved in the club around fifteen years ago, we have a group of trustees that support us and we run regular classes seven days a week which are administered by our twelve coaches.”
Every Tuesday-Friday from 12-1pm the centre opens its doors for free for anybody to come along and train.
Vince told us: “We don’t charge between these times, people can come to the session and we provide them with a pair of gloves, or they can have a brew, sadly quite a few of the lads that have been involved with us have taken their own lives, we want this to be a place where people can have a chat and talk about their mental health problems, we are a place for 2nd chances, people can train without thinking about their troubles, all we ask is everyone gets on.”
The group is affiliated to England Boxing. Vince added “Every December we go up to the Sixth Form College and have an event with local boxers, its televised live on Boxnation and will be taking place on Saturday 17th December this year.”
With the success of English boxers Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury the sport is going through one of it’s most popular phases ever.
“We use boxing as the hook, but it’s all about doing good for the community. We have lots of positive messages on the walls to remind people of their responsibilities and also to motivate them, my favourite saying is “be positive and only have positive people around you“.
A lot of the boxers have gone on to be national champions. Vince told us “It doesn’t matter what religion and background you are, we have the punch bags and speed ball here for people to train, we have helped plenty of refugees who have come here and trained with us. Recently we have had a lot of Ukrainians join us, it’s all about everybody working on their goals in a safe and friendly environment.”
“The city council have been a great help to the centre and have provided us with massive support over the years. During the summer holidays they helped us with a scheme called fit and fed which meant we delivered around 1,000 meals.”
During the recent Commonwealth Games the group took twelve local children to witness boxer Delicious Orie “AKA” DJ win a gold medal in Birmingham.
DJ has provided support and training to the centre “It was a tremendous day, the children were so excited to witness him win and as soon as he won the gold he came over to our group and fist pumped them all, they still talk about it to this day.”
You can follow the group via their Facebook page -> South Wye Police Boxing Academy | Facebook
