Nick Westby: Brook puts crowning gloss on Ingle’s 50-year fight for the kids

So Brendan Ingle set up a weekly dance for the boys and girls of Wincobank at the local church hall, St Thomas’.

When that escalated into scraps as the youth of the swinging Sixties spilled out onto Newman Road, boxing-mad Ingle – 24 himself at the time – took it upon himself to provide all of them, boys and girls, with boxing gloves.

“The girls could fight better than the lads! But nobody ever got hurt,” is a famous quote of Ingle’s.

Half-a-century on and that very same St Thomas’ Boys and Girls Club has become one of the most prolific suppliers of world-class boxers in British history.

And Ingle has become a name renowned throughout the boxing world.

Last week in Carson, California, the Ingle name through Brendan’s son Dominic was on the tips of tongues again as his unbeaten fighter, Kell Brook, landed the IBF welterweight title, a world crown that has been a long time in coming for a boxer whose patience was tested, but his perseverance never broken.

Brook’s journey began, like so many fighters from the Steel City, under the tutelage of Brendan Ingle at St Thomas’, or as it has come to be known, the Ingle Gym.

Brook spent the first nine years of his boxing education under the wing of the soft-spoken Dubliner, and became the fourth man to have emerged from the Wincobank ring to the top of the world.

The three men before him were Jonny Nelson, Junior Witter and perhaps most famously, Prince Naseem Hamed.

The charismatic Naz may have made Ingle, but Ingle has made so many more.

“T’ousands, and t’ousands,” is his answer in that unmistakable Irish accent when asked just how many young boys and girls have walked through his door at St Thomas’.

A former professional with a modest record, he did not get into boxing to make world champions.

He did it to give children in a deprived area an outlet, a shelter and a disciplined environment.

“People say I’m strict – but I just ask these kids to do as they are told,” says Ingle, who is a father-figure to many of his pupils.

As well as teaching them boxing, he taught them and still teaches them, about life.

Many a time he has testified to the strength of a young person’s character, when out of the gym they might be wayward and untethered, but inside the ropes he has seen the good in them and hope for the future.

Brook was one such tear-away. Many a time he had to go to Brook’s school to talk his young protege out of trouble with his teachers.

“There’s no magic words, no abracadabra and everything’s done and suddenly you’re a world champion,” says Ingle of his approach to every child who turns up at his gym with a dedication to learn and improve.

“The only words I ask of them are ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, and if you make a mistake, say you’re sorry and get on with your life.”

Brook moved on towards the end of his teenage years but returned quickly to the Ingle embrace, and it was fitting that Brendan’s son Dominic was the trainer who took him to the very top.

“Kell’s achievement has been a long time in coming but it’s all down to hard work,” continues Brendan.

“Day in, day out he’s at the gym.

“And we’re all over the moon for everything he has achieved.”

Ingle was reunited with his protege at a civic reception for the returning hero in Sheffield on Friday.

Our conversation had to be cut short because a car had been sent to whisk Ingle away to the home-coming at Winter Gardens.

Before then, the interaction had been largely one-sided and a whirlwind of stories and sound bites.

“When I see Jonny Nelson on the television talking to millions I still smile to myself,” begins Ingle of a cruiserweight he turned from hungry young scamp into a world champion.

“He’s one of the stars of our gym, who became one of the stars of Sheffield and then one of the stars of boxing in Great Britain.

“Now he’s a leading boxing pundit on television.”

Ingle’s training days are not so frequent now – he was hospitalised for three days in February after a rare form of epilespy left him paralysed – but the 74-year-old can still be found on a daily basis at the gym that he made famous, and which down the decades has been such a safe haven for young children from the area.

“If anyone comes looking for me they’ll always know where to find me,” laughs Ingle.

“I’ll either be sweeping the floor at the gym or sat on the edge of the ring talking to a young kid.”

Ingle’s services to boxing and young children in Sheffield were recognised in 1998 when he was awarded an MBE. He also has an honorary doctorate from Sheffield Hallam University.

As well as the four champions, he also orchestrated Herol ‘Bomber’ Graham’s 10-year unbeaten reign, and spent a couple of sessions with a young amateur by the name of Clinton Woods – though Ingle does not take credit for that gritty light heavyweight’s rise to the summit of world boxing.

But even that brief dalliance merely emphasises that there is not a boxer to come out of Sheffield in the last half-a-century who has not at some time or another had the Ingle arm around his shoulder.

“Some people say I’m a nice fella from Wincobank, others say I’m a bit mad,” he says.

“But we must have done something right because we’ve been getting results for the last 50 years.

“London, Liverpool and Glasgow were the main centres in boxing back in the 60s when I got involved, but Sheffield has become the main one.”

And Brook will not be the last world champion to emerge from the old church hall of St Thomas’.

Kid Galahad is the man that Dominic Ingle is tipping to be the next to drape a world title belt over his shoulder.

The 24-year-old of Yemeni descent won the Commonwealth super bantamweight title earlier this year.

He has spent 13 years with the Ingles, and was one of six boxers that Brook took with him to his pre-world title fight training camp in Las Vegas, to recreate the banter and competition of his home gym in Sheffield – St Thomas’ Boys and Girls Club in Wincobank – the church hall Ingle used to get kids off the street half-a-century ago.

And another thing...

Saturday, December 6, is a date for your diary.

That is the date pencilled in for Kell Brook’s first IBF world welterweight title defence at the Sheffield Arena.

What a marvellous occasion it promises to be – and long overdue as well.

That was what was so uplifting about Brook’s victory over Shawn Porter in California.

He had been waiting for his chance for more than three years, scheming for it every time he hit the punchbag at the Ingle Gym in Wincobank since the age of nine.

Brook has never been one to overtly court publicity as most British boxers do.

But if a successful first defence is negotiated then the next stop is a likely super fight with Amir Khan in 2015.

Already, Brook’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, is suggesting it could be as big as Froch Groves II, the super fight his Matchroom company promoted the living daylights out of at Wembley Stadium at the end of May.

Already Hearn is putting the Yorkshire versus Lancashire slogan into his comments about such a match-up.

Already he is mentioning Brook’s name in the same company as Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather.

Not before time, people are talking about Brook as a genuine world-class talent.