Limerick boxers pay tribute to courageous Fionn Barry, 7
TWO well-known Limerick boxers have paid a special tribute to young Fionn Barry, who died aged only seven, following their fights at the weekend.
Moyross's Lee Reeves and Graham McCormack of Garryowen both headed to Britain over the weekend, and won their respective bouts.
Lee beat MJ Hall in Sheffield, while Graham defeated Jordan Latimer in Glasgow.
And upon their victories, both men then unfurled a tricolour flag emblazoned with the words Fight for Fionn, in a move which left the youngster's parents Trevor and Brenda overcome with emotion.
Young Fionn, who died just a week after his seventh birthday, was remembered with a Mass of the Angels last week.
He had spent most of his short life in-and-out of hospital, after being diagnosed with cerebral palsy, as well as a rare type of epilepsy, and reflux.
Croom man Johnny Barry, who is Fionn's nephew and godfather, had reached out to the pair ahead of their fixtures.
Speaking to the Limerick Leader, Lee said: "For someone of that age to die, it's horrible to see. It was my pleasure, it was the least I could do. Johnny got me a flag the day before I took off, and I just made sure it was on the top of my mind before I took off. I had someone carry it out. It's nice for his parents to be able to see it. It's seen all over the world that people care."
The southpaw hopes this will ensure a bit of awareness around cerebal palsy, which he described as a "horrible, horrible disease".
"It needs as much light shed on the subject as possible to get the funding and to get the resources that it needs. A young man being born given a chance of just two years, thank God lived until he was seven, and his parents had time to spend with him. But definitely I'd like to help that try to be avoided and someone's life to be prolonged into the future," he added.
Johnny said there was a lot of emotion around the flag unfurling.
Lee added: "It's nice to be nice. In the last couple of weeks, there has been a lot of loss in the city. I gave a shout out to that in an interview I have done after the fight. It's the least you can do. I'm fighting for city, I'm trying to get my city behind me, I'm trying to put Limerick on the map in a sense. I cannot to that completely alone, and I'll help when I can."
Johnny said: "It was absolutely amazing. To see Fionn's name carried all over the world. You could see on Facebook there are seven or eight thousand views on that. These are people who have never met us in our life, and they are still putting such touching comments below on Facebook and private messages. I'll tell you 95% of the people in this world are brilliant. With donations and help, people are genuinely lovely to help good causes."