As Billy Walsh was officially appointed as USA Boxing's new women's national team coach today, the Irish Amateur Boxing Association and Sport Ireland were in front of a Joint Oireachtas Commitee to answer questions about the events which led to the departure of the former head coach of Ireland's high performance unit.
As the parties involved put their views across today, we were joined on Off The Ball by Irish Independent sportswriter Vincent Hogan to talk about his views of today's pronouncements as well as his conversations with Walsh about the controversy.
He started by analysing the financial talking points of the matter that the IABA have focused on.
"Very skillfully, the IABA keep angling the debate away from the fact that it wasn't about money. It was about autonomy," he said.
"Billy Walsh was never looking for benchmarking with any deal he was being offered in America. He was looking for benchmarking with the other high performance directors. Of course, he's never been called the high performance director by the IABA and therefore he's never been paid a high performance director salary. [CEO of Sport Ireland] John Treacy made that point again today."
Hogan added that that issue had been settled, but that the terms of the contract was the issue in the area of autonomy.
Moving onto another point where Treacy told the Committee that the IABA informed them that "we have 20 coaches that can to the job that Billy Walsh can do", Hogan spoke of how: "Billy himself alluded to the fact that the IABA, in some of the interviews he did last week, he felt that the IABA maybe to this day, doesn't quite understand high performance."
As for what might happen in the future when it comes to the leadership of amateur boxing in Ireland and the relationship between the IABA and Sport Ireland, Hogan said: "John Treacy was asked did he have confidence in the board of directors of the IABA and in the CEO Fergal Carruth and he said 'that confidence has been shaken'. I'm not sure Sport Ireland have the appetite to go to war with the IABA but that's essentially what they'll have to do if this utterly dysfunctional history between the two bodies isn't to continue".
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