From the time of the inception of the Australasian championships in 1903, New Zealand amateur boxing teams have travelled to Australia (for these tournaments and for the Olympic and British Empire Games), to France, Holland, Germany, U.S.A., Canada, England, and Wales. But apart from the signal success of Ted Morgan at the Amsterdam Olympics of 1928 and our various winners in the less competitive field of Australasian championship competition (there have been 48 New Zealand titles won here out of a possible 120), only Charlie Purdy (lightweight champion of the Tail Team Games in Ireland, 1924) and Frank Creagh (heavyweight champion of the British Empire Games in Auckland, New Zealand, 1950) and Wally Coe (Empire Games welterweight titleholder, Perth, 1962) have won international honours.

Amateur boxing's two most coveted trophies in the Dominion are the John Jameson Belt, donated in 1927 by a well-known Dublin distillery, and the Earl Stewart Memorial Shield, presented in 1939 in memory of a former well-known administrator and referee. The belt is awarded annually to the competitor who is adjudged the “most scientific boxer” at the national tournament, and the shield to the association whose boxers gain most points at the championships (based on an award of 10 points to a titleholder and five to the runner-up).

by Brian Francis O'Brien, Sports Journalist and Author, Wellington.