Neil McLaughlin competed in the men’s flyweight boxing at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, reaching the quarter-finals – losing only when the referee stopped his bout with the powerful eventual silver medallist Leo Rwabwogo of Uganda after a sustained and courageous display.

A tea-blender from the St Eugene’s Boxing Club in the Bogside district of Derry, McLaughlin was a lifelong Sinn Féin supporter who had participated in the Bloody Sunday civil rights march on 30 January 1972 – the same day his fellow Derry boxer Charlie Nash lost his brother William.

McLaughlin gave evidence at the Saville Inquiry that he heard bullets ‘whoosh’ over his head as paratroopers fired and that he was among about twenty people who threw stones at the advancing army vehicles.

He came to Munich seven months after those events. He was first into the ring on 28 August, winning a unanimous points decision over Sudan’s Mohamed Abakkar with a compact and efficient performance, before receiving a second-round bye and then dispatching Egypt’s Mohamed Selim Soheim with a thundering right-hand punch early in the second round.

In the quarter-final against Rwabwogo, McLaughlin out-boxed the Ugandan in the opening round before mixing it in the second to his cost – surviving two standing counts and a cut eye before the referee stopped the contest in the final round after a very brave display.

On his return, the community of Derry honoured Nash, McLaughlin and the other two Derry athletes at the Games with an open-top lorry tour through the Creggan estate in the pouring rain.