It took Mrs May Gilroy a long time to settle in Ardoyne. Hailing from the Catholic enclave of the Short Strand in east Belfast, migrating to 47 Northwick Drive on the north side of the River Lagan came as a severe jolt to her system.
The Gilroy family had established its roots in shared accommodation at 83 Seaforde Street in east Belfast. In the decade prior to Freddie Gilroy’s birth on 7 March 1936, the Short Strand area had been at the epicentre of a vicious sectarian war that had coincided with the partition of Ireland. As normality returned, May and Frederick Gilroy were married in St Matthew’s Catholic Church and soon three children joined them: Teddy, Freddie and Emily. Work was scarce in Belfast at the time and Freddie senior was forced to seek out a living in Manchester. Life was hard for the Gilroy family, who lived in a single room and struggled when the money Freddie senior sent home from Manchester became scarce, as it sometimes did. In 1941, the Gilroy family reached the top of the corporation’s waiting list, and a house in the newly built Glenard extension of Ardoyne was considered too good an opportunity to miss.
Northwick Drive was four miles from ‘home’ for May Gilroy, who could not settle in to her new surroundings. For two years after the move, the Gilroy children walked daily with their mother on an eight-mile roundtrip to east Belfast to see their relatives. Not surprisingly, fitness came naturally to the Gilroy clan. Eventually the homesickness abated for May Gilroy, and young Freddie settled in at the local Holy Cross Boys’ School on the Crumlin Road. It was there that the future boxing legend would learn the reality of life in Belfast. While known as a conscientious pupil, on leaving the school in 1947 he was told by his teacher Mr Higginson that he ‘would amount to nothing and would be no good to anyone’. Nine years later, Mr Higginson apologised personally to Freddie before he embarked on his trip to the Olympic Games in Melbourne. It was a humble gesture by the teacher – but a bitter lesson for Freddie.
For many boys in the locality, the boxing club was an escape from their humdrum existence. Street fighting was a way of life and, at nine years of age, a button-nosed Freddie Gilroy, fed up with his inability to acquit himself in street fisticuffs, found his way to the St John Bosco boxing club in Donegall Street. It was there that his glittering career began. Father John McSparran was the inspiration behind the Bosco club. He promoted the sport as a means of keeping kids off the street during the austere war years. Situated in an attic of a grain warehouse, the Bosco was in no way salubrious. It cost two shillings to join, while the weekly dues were nine pence for working men, and four pence for schoolboys.
Trainer Jimmy McAree was a gentleman from the old school of boxing. As an amateur, he had won the Ulster senior flyweight title in 1939, representing the Red Triangle club, which had been established by the YMCA for local unemployed men. Noted for his speed and impeccable left hand, he had sparred from an early age with notable professionals such as Jim Kelly, Jackie Quinn and Peter Kane, the future world champion. Although he was destined, it seemed, for the very top as both an amateur and a professional, McAree’s career was cut short when he injured an eye in a work accident. Undeterred, he became the head trainer at the Bosco club during the war and oversaw the careers of such notables as Teddy Fields, Leo McGuigan and Sean McCafferty – all of whom would emulate McAree by claiming the provincial flyweight title.
For many years, Jimmy McAree assisted clubmate Jackie McHugh in the corner of British champion Billy ‘Spider’ Kelly. Jimmy was devoted to boxing and to the kids of the area who entered the club. Freddie Gilroy recalled that ‘he knew boxing from A to Z, and had a wonderful way of bringing out the best in you. Nobody in the gym ever feared his wrath, we just dreaded his disapproval.’ McAree kept the club open five nights a week, for little or no reward. Known affectionately as the Silver Fox, McAree’s grey hair was thatched with shrewdness and devotion to the sport he loved. He knew that he had unearthed a nugget in Gilroy and nurtured the precocious talent with fatherly care. ‘Some kids have it, some kids don’t. Freddie had it right from the start,’ recalled McAree. Jimmy McAree died in 1996; his passing was a body blow to Freddie.
Gilroy was taught to box the old-fashioned way. One trick of McAree’s was to place halfpennies in Freddie’s closed fists when he was hitting the punch bags, and all sorts of punishments were threatened if they fell to the floor. That taught Gilroy how to punch properly, and to punch hard. Soon, Gilroy’s natural talent shone through and brought him honours at the local and national levels. ‘My first title came as a schoolboy when I won the club championships at the three-stone-twelve-pounds weight,’ recalled Freddie. ‘I then progressed on to the Down and Connor championships, which I won on four occasions, and then claimed the Ulster and Irish juvenile titles.’
By 1954, Gilroy was receiving accolades in the Belfast sporting pages as his skill came brilliantly to the fore. That year, he burst onto the national scene by beating Lisburn club’s Dicky Hanna to claim the Ulster junior title, and went on to take the Irish junior title the following month by stopping Paddy Courtney of the Avona club within two minutes. ‘Flyweight Freddie Gilroy is a boxer that one does not need rose-tinted glasses to watch,’ wrote Left Lead in the Irish News after Gilroy’s national victory. The Bosco boy was hot property across Ulster, in high demand by clubs eager to add his name to their annual shows. Under McAree, Gilroy learnt his trade by boxing hundreds of rounds with the then Irish senior flyweight champion, clubmate Jim Matthews. As 1955 dawned, Freddie Gilroy seemed set to plough his way with ease through the Irish senior ranks.
John Joseph Caldwell was born on 7 May 1938, in 63 Cyprus Street, a small two-up, two-down terraced house off Belfast’s Falls and Grosvenor roads. Poverty and unemployment were endemic in the area, where row upon row of terraced red-bricked houses were adorned with religious icons and dominated by the twin spires of St Peter’s Catholic Cathedral. John was one of six siblings born to John Caldwell senior and Bridget Browne, a native of the famous Pound Loney area of the lower Falls. The Caldwell family, like everyone else in the area, were devout Catholics, and daily Mass, devotions and prayer were the order of the day.
Bridget Caldwell was a proud housekeeper and was worshipped by her family. She was a humble but stern woman and strict with her children, who all knew the family rules by heart and the harsh consequences for breaking them. Blasphemy, swearing and impudence were all alien to the Caldwell home; praying, hard work and respect were the order of the day. On Easter Tuesday, 15 April 1941, Belfast bore the brunt of a Luftwaffe attack and almost a thousand lives were lost, as well as swathes of terraced houses in the devastated city. Temporary morgues were created to prepare the dead, and mass graves were dug in both the Milltown and City cemeteries. In Cyprus Street, John Caldwell had been blown from his cot that night as bombs landed too close by. It had been an early lesson in the need for self-defence.
John Caldwell senior worked hard to make ends meet as a joiner. One of his claims to fame was that he had built the boxing ring in the Immaculata boxing club at, of course, no charge. Like his brothers and sisters, John junior went to the nearby St Comgall’s School on Divis Street, where he soon became prey to bullies. Being small in Belfast attracts the attention of street thugs. John was exceptionally petite and this was noted by local toughs eager to prove their credentials in the hard-man stakes. In the face of constant bullying, it was no surprise that the ten-year-old Caldwell joined the Immaculata club. As a boy, John ran errands for the McCusker family in Hamill Street, and when he plucked up the courage to mention to Jack McCusker that he was interested in boxing, one of the most successful partnerships in Irish boxing history began.
The Immaculata club had been founded in 1944 by the Legion of Mary in Belfast’s Corn Market. The initial aim of the club had been to work with young men who had fallen foul of the law, in an attempt to provide an alternative lifestyle through sport. A year later, the club had left the centre of Belfast and relocated to Devonshire Street, in the Falls district, where it opened its doors to all of the boys in the vicinity. Since its establishment, the Immaculata had been the embodiment of boxing excellence. In the early days, trainers such as Tommy Madine, Willie Holden and the Baker brothers, Gerry and Joe, guided the youngsters through their paces. In 1946, future Olympian John McNally claimed the club’s first-ever Irish boys’ championship and placed the Falls Road on the Irish boxing map. He was just one of the greats who have represented the club, which has produced a long line of Ulster and Irish champions too numerous to mention.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the club went from strength to strength under the tutelage of Jack McCusker, Ned McCormick, Harry Enright and Vinty McGurk. The Mac was a small spit-and-sawdust affair which catered to the aspiring boxers of the district. McCusker, a former middleweight champion of Ulster, was more than a mere trainer. He was a gentleman, a father figure, an unofficial social worker, and totally devoted to bettering the lives of the kids of the area. In Caldwell, he discovered a gem. Not a puncher, John boxed with skill by throwing flurries of punishing combinations which bewildered his opponents. ‘I can’t teach him anything. He is teaching me,’ McCusker said of John’s progress.
At fourteen, John left the Hardinge Street Christian Brothers’ School and became an apprentice plumber with Dowling Central Merchants in Belfast’s Upper Queen Street. Apart from work and boxing, religion was central to his life. Every morning, he attended Mass at St Peter’s. Wednesday evenings were spent at the boys’ confraternity in the Clonard Monastery.
With distinctive flair, John swept all in front of him, claiming the Down and Connor, Ulster and Irish boys’ titles with ease. One fight, however, made the Belfast boxing fraternity sit up and realise that Caldwell was something special. That was the final of the 1954 Down and Connor juvenile championships, when he beat clubmate Seamus ‘Toby’ Shannon. Shannon had until then been the golden boy of Belfast boxing. In Caldwell, an opponent he had beaten previously, he came up against a boxer who had become the best ring technician in Ireland – he was virtually untouchable. Caldwell pulled off a surprising win over Shannon, showing no fear as he comprehensively out-boxed an opponent who had formerly had the Indian sign over him.
Thereafter, Caldwell blazed a trail to claim the national juvenile championship at 7st 7lb and dominate the Irish amateur scene. Religion, clean living and a devotion to training made him a skilled exponent of boxing who, by late 1955, had added the Ulster and Irish junior flyweight crowns to his burgeoning trophy cabinet (titles Gilroy had won a year earlier, before stepping up to the senior level). In the Irish junior final on 12 December, Caldwell astounded the audience in the National Stadium with a display of combination punching to defeat army representative Chris Kelly. Still only seventeen, all was falling into place for the precocious talent that was John Caldwell. Representing Ireland at the Olympic Games in 1956 became his sole objective. He would not be denied.