It’s a haunting place these days, the Repton. They reckon around 40,000 have passed through those doors and into this old Victorian bathhouse in the East End. Not today, though.
And not for a while, not since March. There have been a few stragglers hitting bags either side of the lockdowns but it’s been a long, quiet slog of a year. Barely a soul has walked these famous floors, except for Dave Robinson.
He comes in for an hour most days, turns the lights on and off, gets the heating running, checks the post — forces of habit as much as duty. He’s the chairman, but in Britain’s oldest and most renowned amateur boxing club that isn’t usually a suit-and-tie gig, and Dave, at 74, isn’t usually a suit-and-tie kind of guy.
Barely a soul has walked through Repton boxing gym except chairman Dave Robinson this year
He has rolled with punches most of his life and he nearly lost his arm in a cement mixer eight years ago, but that’s another story. Likewise, the day he saw a cocky, young Audley Harrison decked by a welterweight in the big ring — that’s a tale for later, and so are those about the Krays and their terrible paintings and Sugar Ray Leonard and Mad Frankie Fraser, too.
Right now, Dave is just having a wander around the emptiness of a club that has pulsed through its community and he is looking at his walls. He loves his walls. The most beautiful and disgusting walls a man could love. He’d probably hurt you to protect his walls.
‘No probably about it,’ he says.
There are two kinds of walls in this place: those in the main gym which are covered in peeling green and gold paint and hold the pictures of 500 national champions produced by this all-conquering club; then there are the other walls in the tiled side-room, beyond the ‘No Guts, No Glory’ sign.
Those tiles, once white, are covered in half a century’s worth of grime and dust, going back to 1971 when this 136-year-old club moved from round the corner at Victoria Park Square.
In the dirt, almost every famous and unknown visitor, from countless champions to Robbie Williams, has scribbled their name with a wet finger.
‘I’ll tell you a story,’ Dave says. ‘About 15 years ago I went on my holidays and we had cleaners in. The main coach here was Tony Burns. Everyone knows Tony. He is walking around and he sees the cleaner in here. He goes in, “What the f*** are you doing?”
‘The cleaner doesn’t know what to think. “I’m cleaning the walls”, he goes to Tony. Tony starts yelling, “Don’t let Robbo see you touch his walls — he’ll batter you”. He’s washing the names off, you see. Only on one bit but f*** me, that’s our heritage. We don’t have cleaners in there now.
Repton has produced 40,000 fights and Robinson points to some examples of its rich history
‘When we do have decorators in, like last year, I don’t let them touch the peeling paint either. Don’t go making it nice and that, with the magnolia. No. This isn’t a clean place. We want it filthy because it’s real. This ain’t a health club, a keep fit place. It is for fighters. This is the Repton. I have been chairman in here 31 years and I don’t ever, ever want to lose what the Repton is.’
No, he wouldn’t. And nor would those who scraped their fingers through the dirt. And nor should we. But that’s the fear and the possibility, because grassroots sport has been ripped apart by the pandemic and no sport is earthier than amateur boxing. A boxing gym spills blood and washes streets; it breaks faces and it fixes people. Cliché, a little syrupy even, but it’s fair and for all the ethical awkwardness of this rough sport, it can always offer one decent counter-argument: it does more good than harm.
And that is why we have visited Repton on yet another of its quiet afternoons — they are struggling, and if the biggest amateur boxing club in the country is in difficulty, then they all are.
‘Won’t lie, it’s been hard,’ Dave says.
He has retreated to his office with his three coloured exercise books, which track the club’s income in the past nine months across seniors, juniors and the Saturday morning nursery sessions for little kids. They have around 100 members in all, and 16 coaches, each a volunteer like Dave. ‘Since March we’ve taken from subs maybe £140,’ he begins. ‘Think about that — £140. Buttons. That’s our income since March.’
There’s a pause.
‘In a normal year we would take £55,000 from everything — sponsorship mainly, subs, other bits. Our outgoings would be £45,000 of that and we might have £10,000 to £12,000 left, which we put into a few trips to tournaments or something.
‘We had a cash reserve that we have gone through this year. Our rent here is only a pound a year (on a long lease), but you have three grand a year insurance, then electricity, gas, water rates, same as everyone.
Robinson recalled a tale when Audley Harrison was decked by a welterweight in the gym ring
‘Most of what we need comes from sponsorship but with no boxing, how does that work? There is a tournament we usually do in London in May, between us and the big Dockers club in Belfast.
‘All our sponsors buy tables and we earn £25k-30k there and that keeps us going through the year. But that got cancelled because of Covid and it slaughtered us.
‘Now I have my counterpart in Belfast asking if we can come over in March and I just don’t know. With all the restrictions, you can’t plan anything.
‘I worry about this coming year. We missed the May tournament once, but what happens if this Covid isn’t cleared by next May? If it isn’t and we miss that income again, that will really hurt.
‘I don’t want to say we will have to shut the doors for a while but who knows? And what happens to smaller clubs? What can anyone do? How do I replace pads that are falling apart and cost £120 a pair?’ The questions hang in the air.
Of course, there are no easy solutions to any of the problems caused by the pandemic. In the narrower context of sport, it has been arguably toughest on boxing, where social distancing would rather defeat the point. The professional side of the sport has fought back to a small extent through its biggest promoters, such as Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren, who can afford to meet the complex safety requirements.
Even then it is pointed out by Robert Smith, the general secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control, that ‘80 to 85 per cent of boxing shows are small-hall shows and they have been hugely affected’.
When the Government recently divided up a rescue package of £300million for spectator sports, boxing received nothing.
In a normal year the club would take £55,000 but it has earned just £140 since March
The 990 amateur clubs in England — where it all started for Anthony Joshua and so many others — were not eligible for that particular bailout. There are limited help packages out there, and Sport England has put money into grassroots boxing during this crisis but there are just too many in need.
Gethin Jenkins, the CEO of England Boxing, which oversees the amateur code in England, fears clubs will shut, and even if they don’t, scores of boxers who have been forced to stop might not come back.
‘We really need Government support,’ he says, and the trade-off for that should be self-apparent when he adds: ‘Around 40 per cent of clubs are in the lowest 20 per cent of areas of deprivation in the country.’
That takes us back to Robinson and Repton Boxing Club, in the borough of Tower Hamlets, rated in 2017 as having the highest rate of poverty, child poverty, unemployment and pay inequality of any London borough.
In normal times, 40 people might be training there per night; since March, with safety requirements ruling out sparring and much beyond bag work, Dave says it is ‘like a ghost town’.
‘How many of the lads will come back?’ he says. ‘How many will go back on the street? That is why the Government needs to help.’
He’s up on his feet again, walking to the big ring, where three generations of his family down to his grandson have thrown punches.
Darren Barker (L) and John H Stracey are just two major boxing figures out of Repton club
‘We have had people in here who have been in serious trouble but they come in and we teach respect,’ he says. ‘Last year, I only threw out one boy, so it works.’
Dave continues his lap, looking at the hundreds of pictures. This club has dominated amateur boxing in this country, and so many of their lads have become major figures in the professional ranks — world champions like John H Stracey, Maurice Hope, Darren Barker and Andy Lee.
They still talk about another guy, Colin Derrick, who once sparred the welterweight champion Lloyd Honeyghan in here and tore him apart.
‘Best you never saw,’ says Dave.
Asked for further memories, his mind goes to Audley Harrison. ‘It was a Sunday morning, he was waiting for some lads to come in to spar, and we asked a traveller lad Charlie Smith if he fancied it,’ Dave says.
‘He was only a welterweight and Audley is saying, “Does he want to get in with me, does he know who I am?” I say to Charlie, “Go on son, have a good time”. He got gloved up — bang, bang, down Audley went.’
Clubs like this are full of stories. The Krays used to fight for Repton before it moved and Dave even has some of Ronnie Kray’s paintings.
Robinson has been chairman here for 31 years and says he never wants to lose what Repton is
‘They’re pictures of boats and stuff,’ he says. ‘Look, they really aren’t brilliant.’
The gangster Mad Frankie Fraser also used to pop by the club in the Nineties to hit the bags, and once the great Sugar Ray Leonard trekked across London on a flying visit just to step foot in the famous place. ‘Got his name on the wall somewhere,’ says Dave.
‘We also had that Robbie Williams in here a year ago. Those fellas he sang with (Take That) did their first No 1 video here in the Nineties and he came back to do an advert. I think he was p****d the night before, you know.’
He’s laughing now, is Dave. He remembers opening up the doors once so they could shoot the scene in Lock, Stock when Eddie lost £500,000 to Hatchet Harry at brag, and clearer still the feelings he had before March whenever he watched the pad work done each night by the younger sister of Daniel Dubois, Caroline: ‘You just know she will win everything.’
You get an eye for that stuff over time, and Dave has done plenty of it here, never for a penny in return.
He just loves it. All of it, and especially those dirty walls, which make him smile… and also a bit sad for now.