Billy Walsh has opened up about the reasons why he is stepping down as head coach of Irish boxing's High Performance Unit.
Speaking to Off The Ball tonight in a candid interview, Walsh - who has been in charge during an extraordinarily successful period for Irish amateur boxing but will now work with USA boxing - said that he would have loved to stay on but that non-financial factors were a key part of his decision.
"When the contract was offered, if I'd have stepped left or right I was probably going to get the bullet anyway so it's better to leave on your own terms," he said.
During the course of the interview with Joe Molloy, he expanded on the events which led to today's resignation announcement.
"The financial terms were grand but then the non-financial part of it was unacceptable to me. That's why we don't have agreement," he said, before discussing the non-financial reasons.
"I just want to be able to do the job. This has been dismantled along the way in my view and I wanted that control back so that we could drive this team forward heading towards Rio."
He also added: "The last year and a half it started to be dismantled and people being taken out of your office."
Walsh also admitted that issues had been bubbling under for quite some time.
"It had been on my mind for quite a while. This process has been going on since February and there's been times within that some of the pieces that I wanted in place were being rejected. Times like that, I felt like going," he said.
At one point, it appeared that there had been the framework for an agreement between Walsh and the Irish Amateur Boxing Association, but in a statement released earlier today Sports Ireland questioned why that had not gone before the IABA board.
"They said they didn't agree on the day that they were there," he said of the IABA.
"I wasn't in the room when they were making their agreement. I had left the room and I had agreed and as far as I was informed the IABA had agreed. So I thought it was happy days and it was all over and we were going to stay."
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