Sean McCafferty competed in the men’s flyweight boxing at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, reaching the quarter-finals before being eliminated by the eventual champion Fernando Atzori of Italy.

From Francis Street in Belfast’s Smithfield area, in a town house that at one stage housed three families and twenty-eight people, McCafferty joined the St John Bosco Club and collected the standard quota of Antrim and Ulster age-limit titles. His path to flyweight was unusual: as a seventeen-year-old he weighed only six stones and had to eat large quantities of porridge to build his weight up to the flyweight limit.

His confidence was built through sparring with and carrying the kit bag of his idol Freddie Gilroy, the brilliant Belfast professional – ‘Freddie was training us and I sparred him all the time so my confidence was sky high as I learned so much from him.’ He also adapted Gilroy’s southpaw style.

In 1963, McCafferty completed the sweep of Ulster and Irish junior and senior flyweight titles. At Tokyo, he opened with a unanimous decision over Cuba’s Rafael Carbonell, then secured a split-decision victory over Ghana’s Sulley Shittu – a quality fighter who later won two Commonwealth Games gold medals. Atzori had the measure of McCafferty in all three rounds of the quarter-final and went on to win the gold medal.