News

The Scottish Team arrived safely in New Delhi after a long flight from Malta. Many of the team were exhausted so a short training session was arranged to record the boxer’s weight then the team was sent to bed.

The boxers trained today (08.0.2010) at the hotel with the exception of Aston Brown who has developed a sore throat. Team Manager Colin McEwen acted promptly and arranged and appointment with Medical Officer for the tournament and he has given antibiotics to cure the infection. We are informed that Aston is feeling better this afternoon.

The team met with it’s Liaision Officer today then went to the competition venue. The team will partake in two training sessions tomorrow at the venue and photos of this will be posted in due course. The competition commences on 10 march 2010.

Aberdeen’s Treetops Hotel was the venue for the semi-finals of the Scottish Amateur Boxing Senior Championships on Friday the 5^th March. The annual event on the Northern District boxing calendar was organised by Kincorth ABC’s Norman Watt.

A large crowd of Aberdeen’s business community were wined and dined before the boxing, ensuring another successful evening, with the cream of amateur boxing in Scotland in their respective weight divisions providing the punch.

The show opened with a local contest outwith the championships between two young local schoolboy boxers, Billy Stewart of Aberdeen ABC and David Dalziel of Peterhead ABC over 3 x 1 min rounds. Dalziel won a closely fought bout on points.

The second bout was a quarter final between Brian Peacock of Barrhead and Robert Kaminsky of Denny at 75kgs. This bout came up because amateur boxers can’t box more than twice in 24 hours and they’d had two bouts at the preliminaries. Peacock won 10-5 on points with the greater accuracy in his punches.

3^rd bout of the show was the 1st of the semi-finals at 60kgs between Sean Dick of Paisley and Lewis Benson of Queensferry. Dick’s non-stop style unsettled the normally fluid Benson who had reach and height advantage, and Dick duly won with a score of  15-8.

The 2^nd semi-final at 60kgs featured Ryan Smith of Barrhead and Callum Susans of Dunfermline. Dick’s counter punching to Susan’s attacks was effective enough in this closely fought all action bout, and he duly won on points by 9-3.

The 69kgs opening semi-final featured Ryan Hamilton of Hillpark in Bannockburn against Garry Collins of Queensferry. This was a very hard fought bout between two well matched boxers, but two standing counts quickly followed by a third in round 2 forced the referee to call a halt with Hamilton piling on the pressure on the brave Collins.

The other semi-final at 69kgs had George Thomson of Stirling against Tommy Philbin of Lochend. Philbin showed his full range of skills both offensively and defensively in the face of sustained pressure from Thomson and he needed the latter, since Thomson was non-stop aggression. With a very close 5-4 score line Thomson took the decision in the bout of the night.

The initial 81kgs semi-final had Kevin McAllum of Dunfermline matched with Kevin Bruce of Kingdom in an all Fife bout.  Bruce’s accuracy with his overhand right brought the bout to a close in the opening round with McAllum suffering from a suspected broken nose and the referee stopping the bout.

The show closed with the other 81kgs semi-final between David Nelson of Kinross matched with Scott Hartley of Alloa. This was a fairly tousled affair with neither dominating, though Hartley was doing most of the attacking while Nelson countered. In the end Hartley progressed by 21-20 on the count back after the scores were tied at 10-10 at the end of the bout

The final of the 91+kgs will be fought between Michael McDonagh of Port Glasgow and Gary Cornish of Inverness when both their opponents failed to appear and they were both given a walk-over into the final.

ABS Ltd will be posting updates on how are boxers are doing at their Malta training camp and then how they perform at the Commonwealth Federation Championships in Delhi which will be held on 10-18 March 2010.

The team arrived safely in its Maltese training base yesterday after leaving Edinburgh at 7.30am following a relatively short flight of 3 hours 20 minutes. After resting yesterday we have been informed that the boxers are all responding well to instructions from the Coaches and Team Management.

The standard of accommodation and transportation is also excellent in Malta. All boxers are also on target for their respective weight targets – This will be the first time our Boxer’s have competed under the new weight categories that will be implemented in September 2010 before the 2010 Commonwealth Games and are 49Kg, 52Kg, 56Kg, 60Kg, 64Kg, 69Kg, 75Kg, 81Kg, 91Kg and 91Kg.

A further update will follow tomorrow.

LBS ltd will be selling various items of branded clothing for the very first time at the second Scottish senior semi-finals which will be held at the Time Capsule on 12 March 2010. Items on sale will be Shirts, Fleeces and Hoodies.

Other items that will be introduced for sale over coming months will be Blazer pins, ties and patches with the updated logo on them. Further details will be post as the items become available.

ABS Ltd hosted the 2010 Scottish Youth and Senior Prelims on 27 February 2010 at Lasswade High School.

The event was was a great success and despite the bad weather conditions there were 56 bouts held over the whole day in the two rings.

Both the Youths and the Seniors provided some very exciting bouts.

The Semi Finals will be held over the next two weekends with the 60Kg, 69kg, 81Kg and 91+ Kg bouts along with a Senior 75Kg Quarter Final being contested on 05 March 2010 at the Treetops Hotel in Aberdeen.

The 54Kg, 57Kg, 64Kg 75Kg, and 91Kg bouts will be contested the following weekend on 12 March 2010 at the Time Capsule sports center in Coatbridge.

A full list of results from the weekend can be found in documents section of the website.

Please note that the 54Kg Semi Finals that were scheduled to held at the Treetops Semi Final in Aberdeen on 05 March 2010 have now been moved to the second Semi Finals that will be held in the the Time Capsule in Coatbridge on 12 March 2010.

The Programme for the Semi Finals in Aberdeen can be downloaded from the documents section also.

ABS Ltd held its first ever R&J consultation meeting on 21 February 2010. This was a very well attended meeting that showed there was huge support for modernisation of our referees and judges.

It was noted that there is much work to be done with the development of referees and judges in Scotland and the board see this as one of the key developments in Scotland. No consultation meetings have been held in the past and this meeting was seen as the way forward in showing the pathway for our referees and judges.

ABS Technical Director Andy Caulfield will collate feedback from the meeting and will produce a strategic plan for the board that will detail how ABS Ltd will improve its current R&J function.

Overall there was a great reponse from the volunteers that attended the consultation who found the day very informative.
It was explained that this is a transitional period for ABS Ltd and that the strategic plan for R&J will co-incide with the build up to Glasgow 2014

It was also noted that ABS Ltd’s key investor sportscotland was very supportive of the development of R&J as volunteer development is key target area of the ABS Ltd strategic plan.