The document discusses the history of boxing in Kingsbridge, a town in South Hams, England. It describes how boxing was very popular in the town from the 1940s to the 1960s, with intense rivalries between local clubs. A man named Burgoyne started the Kingsbridge Amateur Boxing Club in 1948 and several local boxers found success. However, interest began declining in the 1970s as other distractions emerged and bigger clubs offered more prizes. The story then jumps to 2011, when a man named Ed Hall took up boxing and had a knockout win, stirring memories of Kingsbridge's boxing past for Burgoyne.

1. KBG/DTC
BOXING
Boxer’s emergence stirs some
fond memories of a bygone ageas he’s got a wealth of
knowledge about box-
ing and stories to tell
about the past.’
The ex-Kingsbridge
RFC ‘A’ team second
row only took up box-
ing last year as ‘some-
thing to keep my fitness
up’ after finishing play-
ing rugby.
He competed in an
open show competition
for Saltash Amateur
Boxing Club against
Devonport ABC – and
made the best possible
start to his fledgling
career.
He knocked out his
opponent shortly into
the third two-minute
round of three – and
then issued a clarion
call to any wannabe
boxers in Kingsbridge
to follow in his foot-
steps.
Hall, who was fight-
ing at the novice 80.5kg
light-heavyweight cate-
gory, said: ‘Hopefully
my win will stir a bit of
interest in boxing local-
ly again.
‘I don’t know of any
other boxer in the town
at the moment and I
wish I had been really
flying the flag for
Kingsbridge. I loved
playing rugby for the
town. But at least I was
in the town colours of
blue.’
Hall, who is set to
join the army in Jan-
uary, said he has had to
endure plenty of good-
natured mickey-taking
from friends following
the publication of the
article.
But he said some had
even expressed interest
in taking up the sport
themselves – although
he’s not sure how seri-
ous they were.
He hopes to fit in a
few more amateur
bouts for Saltash in the
autumn, before hope-
fully pursuing the sport
in the army next year.
While Hall is, as far
as he knows, the town’s
sole boxer in 2011,
rewind to the halcyon
days of the 1940s, 50s
and 60s and it was a
completely different
story.
The old town hall,
the venue for the bouts,
was so crammed ‘peo-
ple had to be turned
away’, according to
Burgoyne.
He said the bouts
provoked intense inter-
town rivalry, with 14
boxers from each place
regularly opposing
each other.
He said Kings-
bridge’s contests with
Totnes ABC were par-
ticularly fierce.
Boxing was, he insi-
sted, the perfect pas-
time for young men
who had little to do
without the modern
distractions of the inter-
net and television and
needed some way of
burning off their excess
energy.
Burgoyne responded
to this need by starting
up a club in Kings-
bridge in 1948, with
fights held every Sun-
day in a mobile boxing
ring.
He even converted
part of the base of his
family’s haulage firm
A.Burgoyne and Sons
(Transport) Ltd in
Union Road into a
training facility.
‘It went like a bomb,’
he said of the success of
the club.
He can thank his
father Alfred for ignit-
ing his interest in the
sport after he presented
his young son, who
regularly engaged in
bouts of fraternal feud-
ing with identical twin
brother Arthur, with a
pair of boxing gloves
when he was 12.
And it’s with a fair
degree of pride that
Burgoyne reveals that
his sibling was the only
man to knock him out
during a career which
spanned about 30 fights
at Western Counties
level.
He said: ‘My brother
caught me with a hay-
maker in training when
I was about 15.’
The Burgoyne broth-
ers, along with two
other sets of twins,
Harry and John Trant
and Bill and John Patey
from Malborough, were
at the forefront of the
burgeoning boxing
scene in the South
Hams.
Also in the vanguard
of its success were two
men who became jun-
ior champions within a
year of the club begin-
ning, John Cope and
Christopher Crispin.
Cope later became
the lightweight cham-
pion of Devon, Dorset
and Cornwall.
After hanging up his
gloves in the early
1950s, Burgoyne contin-
ued to be Kingsbridge
boxing’s pre-eminent
figure by becoming an
international referee
and life president of the
Devon and Cornwall
Amateur Boxing Assoc-
iation.
‘I was the first person
to referee inside the
ring at Western Coun-
ties level,’ he said.
‘They used to referee
the bouts at ringside
before that. I also went
abroad to places such
as Rotterdam and Ams-
terdam and also refer-
eed at the Royal Albert
Hall.’
His boxing pedigree
also acted as a useful
deterrent to would-be
criminals during his
illustrious police career
– he was a Devon spe-
cial constable for 27
years.
Burgoyne recalled:
‘When I was on duty,
they used to say: “Bur-
goyne’s on tonight, we
can’t have any non-
sense”.’
However, nothing
lasts forever and, by the
1970s, interest in box-
ing in the town had
started to wane consid-
erably.
Fewer and fewer pe-
ople made themselves
available to assemble
the mobile boxing ring
and faithfully carry it
up to the town hall as
other distractions inter-
vened, said Burgoyne.
Furthermore, bigger
clubs, such as those at
Exeter and Torquay,
were offering more
enticing cash prizes
than Kingsbridge ABC
could ever hope to give
to amateur boxers.
With the sport also
being shown on televi-
sion, the town hall was
no longer a teeming
cauldron of electrifying
organised combat as
punters preferred to
watch amateur bouts
from the comfort of
their armchairs.
‘The sport had bec-
ome more professional
than amateur,’ said
Burgyone, ruefully.
‘I’d become really
browned off and decid-
ed to close it (the club).’
Thankfully, Ed Hall
came along 37 years
later to rekindle Bur-
goyne’s blissful memo-
ries of Kingsbridge’s
glorious boxing past.
And Hall would
surely agree that it was
the older man, the
undoubted patriarch of
pugilism in Kings-
bridge, who delivered
the knockout display
on this occasion given
his fascinating, blow-
by-blow accounts of
bouts and boxers of
yesteryear.
● Do you have any
memories and photos
of boxing in the South
Hams?
If so, we’d like to
hear from you. Please
call Euan Reedie on
01548 856353, write to
him at South Hams
Newspapers, 101-103
Fore Street, Kings-
bridge, TQ7 1AF, or
email him at the sports
desk at sport@tindle
news.co.uk.
Our article on Hall’s success on Friday, June 24
Buy this picture at www.buypicture.net Greg Taylor 22074873
Burgoyne and Hall look back at the article which was the trigger for their meeting
Buy this picture at www.buypicture.net Greg Taylor 22074860
Burgoyne and Hall: a match for anyone in their respective eras
Follow us on Twitter @NewsSouthHams, or visit www.southhams-today.co.uk Friday, July 29, 2011 61