RECENT losses for Ian Eldridge and James Yelland have not floored the St Albans and London Colney Amateur Boxing Club.

In fact, the club has been enjoying a minor rejuvenation recently and Paul Rees, who trains both Eldridge and Yelland out of the St Albans club, is hoping to play a significant part in returning the club to the glory years of the 1970s and 1980s.

"Everybody concerned with the club wants to take it back to where it used to be," Rees said.

He has spotted enough potential in the area to convince him to combine management with training, with a view to taking a group of high-quality amateurs into the professional ranks.

Rees secured his management licence earlier this month and, together with Michael Helliet who won two national titles in the mid 1990s and is now Competition Secretary at the club has already made the first steps in this direction.

"We've got our eye on a few boxers that have potential," Rees said. "We're really looking for quality boxers that we can help move on to bigger and better things."

Danny Lawless and Alan Rowlands (both 14) are names in the frame.

Perhaps these two teenagers underline Helliet's belief that it will take a few years before St Albans is again a hotbed for local boxing. But to ensure that it does eventually get there, the club has established a number of strategies intended to improve the quality of their boxers.

Both Helliet and Rees are using their contacts in the game to attract top boxers to the gym.

In this sense, Helliet expects to complete a link with the Golden Gloves Club in Las Vegas next April.

"Golden Gloves is the most exclusive boxing club in the world," Helliet said. "It's got Mike Tyson and Tommy Hearns. Once we're affiliated it will mean that when their boxers come out here to the UK, they'll be training at St Albans, and some of our best boxers will go out there."

It is hoped that these measures will lead to a gradual rise through the ranks of some of the St Albans fighters, and their progress will in turn improve the standing of their club.

To kick-start this process, the club is organising a mini-tournament scheduled for next February.

"It will be the first thing like this that we've done for a number of years," Rees said. "There should be quite a few fights and we're going to try get a few celebrities down here as well."

The purpose of this show is two-fold. Apart from the experience it will offer the fighters, Helliet said that by hosting three or four of these events each year, the club hopes to develop a regular, and local, boxing fan base.

December 14, 2001 12:00