These are testing times for Irish boxing.
The Irish Athletic Boxing Association’s High Performance Unit sent an eight-strong team to the Rio Olympics, seven men and one woman.
Hopes were sky-high at the end of July that they would bring home a hatful of medals, possibly even improving on their incredible London 2012 haul when the squad of six brought home four medals - including Katie Taylor’s gold.
The pre-Games feel-good factor was knocked pretty quickly though when news filtered through of Michael O’Reilly’s failed drugs test before a punch had even been thrown in anger.
That was last Friday and the unsettling saga rolled on until Tuesday when it emerged that the Portlaoise-based boxer had chosen not to contest the finding and was being sent home - the first ever Irish athlete sent home from a Games for a doping violation.
In the days between then two Irish boxers exited competition.
David Oliver Joyce, so long the bridesmaid and never the bride, finally fought in the Olympics. He won his first fight, but ran up against slick Azeri fighter Albert Selimov in the second round and his race was run.
Far more alarming was Paddy Barnes’ shock second round defeat to Spain’s Samuel Carmona Heredia. Well, it was a shock to those of us watching who expected the double-Olympic bronze medallist to go deep into the competition.
But it wasn’t exactly a shock to the man himself, as he admitted afterwards that he went through hell to make the 49kg men’s light-flyweight limit and that he had no energy in the ring.
This, of course, raises questions as to why the 29-year-old hadn’t moved up a weight category, as fighters often do as they get older and their bodies change, though that’s an argument for another day.
Of the Irish boxers who have been in the ring, only Stephen Donnelly from Ballymena has won a fight and is still standing.
In all, five of our boxers remain - Donnelly, Taylor, Brendan Irvine, Michael Conlan and light-heavyweight Joe Ward, who steps between the ropes at 11.15pm Irish time on Wednesday.
To equal London’s four-medal tally 80% of the team that’s left has to make the podium. To better it, all of them do.
As a nation we are rightly proud of our Olympic boxers and the programme that produced them.
But we also have a tendency to ignore the sport outside of its big set-pieces, with the focus only really sharpening around the time of the big show ever four years.
Day-to-day Irish sports fans invest most of their time in England’s Premier League, Gaelic Games and rugby. Boxing flies under the radar.
And because of this the damage inflicted on the High Performance Unit by the departure, first in 2008, of its founder Gary Keegan, and then late last year of its beating heart Billy Walsh has been overlooked.
Keegan is now Director of Sport Ireland, a post he is due to leave in September to pursue business interests.
Walsh was poached by the American Olympic project, though he made it clear it was his preference to stay in Ireland if the terms and conditions were right. Clearly they weren’t.
There’s no doubt that Taylor, Conlan, Joyce, Irvine and Donnelly can all climb onto the podium at these Games, though it’s long odds that each of them will manage what is an enormous ask for any athlete.
These are trying times for Irish boxing. Medals over the next ten days in Rio would be a boost to the sport and to the country, though long term there are serious issues that need to be addressed if this isn’t to be the start of a period of decline.
