GBF vice: Inadequate preparation cost Black Bombers

The First Vice-President of the Ghana Boxing Federation, Dauda Fuseini, believes the team would have done much better if they had received adequate support from the government.

According to him, the lack of attention from authorities during most of their preparation ahead of the qualifiers in Senegal was a contributory factor to their poor showing at the Africa qualifiers.

Speaking to Graphic Sports in an interview last week, the first vice-president lamented the authority's inability to give the boxers sufficient residential camping on the excuse that there were not enough funds.

''Amateur boxing is directly under the government. So, we believe it is the government, together with the GOC, who has to ensure we get adequate preparation that we needed,” he said.

Mr Fuseini said due to the nature of the sport it was important for the boxers to be kept in a residential camping for at least two months so they could be monitored and given the right food and nutritional supplements but that request to the government fell on death ears until about two weeks to the competition before they went to camp.

''Boxing is a combat sport and it entails a lot. You have to get yourself well-equipped before the fight. We went to them (the government) to solicit support to start training on time, although the non-residential camping started early enough, when you don’t get the teams together on time it brings a big problem because when they go back to their various homes you don’t know what they do afterwards,'' he stated.

Fuseini said it was always difficult getting to know what the boxers did outside of camp and said the best way to keep an eye on them was to put them in residential camping, which came too late.

''You'll see a boxer training so hard to convince you that he has all it takes to be in form but behind the scenes he might be doing a different thing, which the trainer or management might not know. But when you call them together as a team in camp, you get to monitor their activities and whatever they do and by doing so you can confirm boldly that my team is ready and prepared for the championship.

''So mostly it is advisable that two or three months before a competition you should get them together in residential camping, so you keep monitoring them diet-wise. All these things were not done but at the later stage, about two weeks into the programme, we just went for a residential camping and then went to the tournament, which to me, I think is not enough,'' he said.

“Boxing has always been struggling financially and this is what we always go through and this is why sometimes we are so sad because boxing is one discipline that consistently brings something home unlike the other disciplines but giving it the needed attention has become a problem,” he stated.