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VERA PAUW WILL undoubtedly be named Manager/Coach of the Year at RTÉ’s end-of-year awards and I doubt anyone will begrudge her that recognition.

But surely nobody can top Zaur Antia’s 2022.

Under the Georgian’s tutelage, Ireland’s boxers have this year won two World Championship gold medals, four European golds, three European silvers, two European bronzes, and two golds at the prestigious Strandja Tournament. All but one of the Northern Ireland team who took home seven medals — five of them gold — from the Commonwealth Games train under Antia in the High Performance Unit in Abbotstown. There were also seven medals taken home from the European U22s by Antia’s next-gen talents.

His women’s team in Budva, Montenegro, last week may not make the same cultural dent as Pauw’s Girls in Green — and the fact that RTÉ continue to overlook major boxing tournaments will see to that — but their topping the medals table and being voted Team of the Tournament (Dundalk’s Amy Broadhurst also picked up the individual gong) at least provided us with the glorious image of Antia standing atop a podium, trophy in hand, pride personified.

There is a strong case to be made that, looking down even on Big Jack, Éamonn Ryan, Brian Cody, Joe Schmidt and others — not that he would.

Since his arrival at the inception of the High Performance Unit in 2003, Irish boxers have won over 160 medals at major championships — that’s Olympics, Worlds, Europeans, EUs and Commonwealths — a level of success unparalleled in any other era or by any other sport.

He has technically and tactically engineered more than a quarter of Ireland’s 35 Olympic medals as an independent state.

While Irish boxing has perpetually punched itself in the face on an administrative level for two decades, ridding him of invaluable partners such as Gary Keegan, Billy Walsh, Eddie Bolger and, most recently, Bernard Dunne, Antia has bit down on the gumshield and ploughed on. He and the constant flow of international medals have been virtually the only two constants.

All the more remarkable is the fact that, really, Antia’s involvement in Irish boxing is one big marvelous accident.  

In mid-2002, Cork businessman and international boxing referee Dan O’Connell was in the Black Sea port of Poti, Georgia. He had been invited over by his friend of 10 years, and Georgian boxing equivalent, Zurab Tibua, to help train local referees and judges.

O’Connell spotted Antia working with local fighters down the back of the local gym in Potia. That he was blown away despite not understanding a word of Antia’s instructions tells its own story. 

Zaur Antia, as it so happened, was Zurab Tibua’s best friend. Ireland, as it so happened, were in the market for a head coach.

Antia came to Ireland in late 2002 and interviewed for Gary Keegan, who was in the midst of establishing Irish boxing’s transformative High Performance Unit. Antia didn’t have a word of English, so he brought with him Tibua as his interpreter . . . 

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