Mixed fortunes for Kingdom boxers at Scottish Novice Championships

Kingdom coaches Brian Allan and Amber Keane with Joe Lafferty (left) and James McLaren (right)

There were mixed fortunes for Kingdom’s welterweights at the Boxing Scotland Novice Championships at Ravenscraig Sports Facility Motherwell at the weekend.

Saturday was the welterweight preliminary rounds and first up was former Novice Youth Champion Joe Lafferty, who has returned after a long lay-off from boxing.

Joe was drawn against Patrick Williams of Forsyths Boxing Gym of Glasgow, a well matched contest in which both boxers had good spells but it was Joe’s constant attacking style and cleaner shots that gave the Kirkcaldy boxer a unanimous win on all five judges scorecards to progress to the quarter finals on Sunday.

Joe’s next opponent was the tall Mohammed Rafay of Glasgow City BC, right from the start it was an uphill struggle for the shorter Kingdom boxer to try get past his opponents long reach.

Joe’s constant attacking had some good results, especially in the last round, but it was the Glasgow boxer’s counter-punching and tactics that won on the day.

Next up for Kingdom in the same welterweight quarter finals was James McLaren against Peter Stewart of Bannockburn Boxing Club.

The Bannockburn boxer came out like a raging bull, which resulted in him hitting the canvas in the first exchange and receiving an eight count from the referee.

A second eight count followed for Stewart before he had his gumshield knocked from his mouth, which initiated his corner to through in the towel after just 90 seconds of the first round.

James has had great preparation for these championships and had some first class sparring sessions with Joe which definitely helped with this quarter final bout.

James now goes through to next Saturday’s semi-final and also in action this weekend is Kingdom’s Featherweight Elite Female boxer Chloe Wright and 56kg Schoolboy Kieran Horne.