New information is always welcome, but I feel this particular thread has run its course . To be honest I think it has been established beyond reasonable doubt that the expansive claims , made by his Grandson,of Gilroy being the equivalent of the Uk's Charley Burley,that he was somehow conspired against to prevent him reaching his rightful place as a British Champion, and world title challenger have already been emphatically blown out of the water. More exposing of this myth begins to smack of ,"beating a dog when he is down," ,and is becoming, to me at least , to be rather distasteful,can we not now leave his relative to his illusions and move on?
I've just taken a look at the grandson's Facebook profile, the guy is an absolute nut-job and extreme conspiracy theorist. Some of his views on world events are straight out of the David Icke teaching manual. No wonder the internet is choked with all this Gilroy claptrap if he brings that level of fanaticism to his research. I agree, leave him to it, you won't change the thoughts of a person with that mind-set.
I'd still be interested in reading what he has to say. It's a fascinating era and IMO it would be worthwhile to see this addressed by someone who has researched it extensively, especially the ratings.
Was Bert Gilroy ranked the number one contender for a British title for ten years? The last time that Bert Gilroy was ranked number one at any weight in Britain was on September 8th 1948 when he topped the British rankings at light-heavyweight. So, for starters, if he was ranked number one for ten years then he must have been ranked number one at some weight or another in 1938. He wasn’t. In 1938 Bert Gilroy had an excellent year. He became the Scottish middleweight champion by beating Tommy Smith of Clackmannan, although as I stated over on BoxRec, Smith was no great shakes and not a particularly good champion. Gilroy had thirteen contests that year, winning twelve and drawing one and he stopped quite a number of his opponents. Amongst the men that he beat in 1938 were Roy Mills, Charlie Parker, Ken Robinson and Paul Schaeffer. These were all very good men but none of them were real top-class. In 1937 the National Boxing Association (NBA) was formed and it started to rank British boxers in 1938. I think that one or two people here might be confusing this organisation with the American organisation of the same name. There was no connection at all between the two. The British organisation was a Boxer’s Union. It was connected to the National Union of Boxers (formed 1935) and was also sometimes known as the British Boxing Association. The purpose of the NBA was to look after the best interest of active professionals and to ensure that they got a fair deal from the promoters. Jimmy Wilde was instrumental in its establishment and did a lot of active work to make it a success. In 1938 the first NBA rankings were published for British fighters at the eight weights. The NBA published their top-ranked middleweight fighters on eight occasions between 1938 and 1940. This is where they ranked Gilroy : Aug 17 1938 - 7th from 10 Sep 7 1938 - not ranked amongst top 6 Nov 23 1938 - not ranked amongst top 6 Feb 1 1939 - not ranked amongst top 8 Feb 22 1939 - not ranked amongst top 8 Jun 7 1939 - not ranked amongst top 8 Oct 25 1939 - not ranked amongst top 8 Apr 17 1940 - 7th from 9 I am not aware of any other body, apart from the NBA that regularly rated boxers in Britain between 1938 and 1947. Boxing News started to regularly rate boxers from 1947 onwards. They also produced some sporadic ratings lists every now and again, the first one being in 1933. Fortunately, they did so in 1942. In the January 22 issue of the paper Boxing News rated the British middleweights as follows: Champion McAvoy. 1. Ginger Sadd 2. Jack Hyams 3. Ernie Roderick 4. Dick Turpin 5. Jim Berry 6. Bert Gilroy I do not think these ratings are the best and I think that they may be being a little hard on Gilroy, but he clearly wasn’t number one here either. The British Boxing Board of Control never rated boxers. So, we have a problem. There were no ratings published between 1943 and 1947, and with Gilroy not being rated number one in either 1938, 1939, 1940 or 1942 the claim is obviously false. Where I think his grandson is justifying his claim is because Gilroy won a final eliminator for the British title in 1940, did not get a title shot and was still their outstanding contender in 1944, when Freddie Mills blitzed him. He is then taking the 1948 Boxing News rating, when Gilroy was number one at Light-heavyweight and then extrapolating the 1940 Board 'ranking' to the 1948 Boxing News ranking to show that he was number one for eight years, or ten years as he put it. Gilroy beat Ginger Sadd in 1940 to earn his middleweight title shot. Between 1940 and 1944 Gilroy lost to and drew against a number of other middleweight contenders and, despite the Board sticking with him between 1940 and 1944, he was clearly not the best middleweight in Britain. Jock McAvoy, Freddie Mills, George Davies, Dave McCleave, Jim Berry and Dick Turpin were all superior to him in my view, as results showed. To analyse the ten year period in question I would make the following observations about Gilroy’s overall status and position. 1938. Nowhere near the top. Best position 7th at middleweight according to NBA. 1939. Moving towards the top handful at middleweight. Not rated within the top eight at any time by the NBA. I actually think the NBA might have been a bit harsh on Gilroy here. I think a case could be made for his inclusion, perhaps around seventh or eighth. 1940. Nominated by the Board to contest a final eliminator with Ginger Sadd. Neither of the two men were in the top six in Britain in my view and the NBA ratings agree on this. . I suspect that the Board were looking to maintain interest in their titles and nominated the best two men who were actually available. The Board did this then and still do it today. . There are many instances of men being matched for the title when they aren’t amongst the best, they are the best of the men who are actually willing, or available. A recent example would be Sam Sexton versus Gary Cornish meeting for the British Heavyweight title in 2017. I think that some more suitable candidates made themselves unavailable due to the uncertainties of the war, which had only just broken out. Many men had become servicemen and couldn’t, or didn’t want to, commit to a training schedule for a British title bout. Gilroy wins this bout and is therefore the legitimate contender. 1941 through 1942. Gilroy does little to enhance his claim to be the best in the country as his victories are achieved against men far inferior to him and in the only contest when he comes up against a man ranked within the top ten, he boxes a draw against Jack Hyams, by then a fading veteran. Ranked number 6 at middleweight by Boxing News 1943. Loses to Dave McCleave and Jim Berry. Both of these were top men. Gilroy lost to them both. 1944. Nominated as leading contender for Middleweight title by the Board. He is then hammered by Freddie Mills in a non-title bout and is also beaten again by McCleave and Berry. I suspect that the Board were merely honouring the fact that Gilroy had won a final eliminator in 1940 and had still not boxed for the title when they named him as the leading contender. Far from conspiring against him, as his Grandson always claims, I think that there is evidence here that the Board were standing by Gilroy, despite him being not the best middleweight in Britain at this time. 1945. Loses to Vince Hawkins, another good British middleweight. Makes the move to light-heavy and wins the Scottish title against a man well short of real class. 1946 and 1947. Unbeaten at light-heavy, has a good win against Al Marson, which confirms his position as number one light-heavy with Boxing News. 1948. Number one light-heavy with Boxing News 1949. Number six light-heavy with Boxing News So, the bottom line is that Gilroy was not, as has been claimed “either Kept Away from, Robbed, Denied, Passed Over and Blatantly CHEATED though No.1 and for 10 years” The main problem I have with Bert is that his best wins were against Ben Valentine and Jim Berry, both very good men and top ten middles. These wins do not make him an all-time great. Every time he came up against anyone of real class he got hammered, usually within the distance.
Very informative! I for one also thought the NBA being referred to was the American one. Not that we didn't know already that the Gilroy as Charley Burley thing was a bit of a joke, but this really puts the issue to rest. No doubt his relative will continue the campaign though.
I've mocked the grandson enough but for balance, I'll just put this as a supplement to Miles' post above for a bit more detail. I came across the NBA Middleweight rankings for 1st April 1940. I don't know how to post pictures here so I'll type them out. Jock McAvoy (Champion) Ginger Sadd Eddie McGuire George Davis Jack Hyams Richard Turpin Bert Gilroy Ben Valentine Freddie Mills I find these rankings strange going purely by the records of the above on Boxrec. Ginger Sadd is the number one contender to McAvoy according to the NBA, yet he suffered four consecutive defeats prior to the date of these rankings, two of which were to Gilroy (#7) and Turpin (#6). His next fight on 10th April would be a defeat to Mills (#9). Gilroy beat Sadd four weeks prior to the publishing of these rankings and having seen how the grandson's mind works, he sees conspiracies everywhere in life not just in Gilroy's boxing career, that would make Gilroy the number one contender in his eyes, and I can sort of see where he's coming from in this instance.
Excellent post by Miles (who I’m glad has signed up) and finally we have put the Gilroy stuff to bed. Never again will he be spoken of as a forgotten great or whatnot: we just have to direct them to this thread.
You seem level headed, articulate, and intelligent. What a breath of fresh air. You don’t belong here.
Great to see Miles Templeton's contributions to this thread. In light of this information that the Board didn't rate fighters, I can only presume the news clipping from January 1944 ["Bert Gilroy, middleweight champion of Scotland, who has just been acknowledge by the Board of Control as the No.1 challenger for Jock McAvoy's title"] was in fact perhaps referring to the Board's policy of upholding the 1940 win in a their (most recent?) eliminator as being valid still, during the war years - with McAvoy having not defended since the 1930s. McAvoy didn't defend middleweight title again. By the time the vacant title was contest in 1945 by Ernie Roderick and Vince Hawkins, Gilroy had lost a few more fights. Importantly ...... Dave McCleave won an 8-rounder against Gilroy in May 1944. Dave McCleave then lost to Vince Hawkins in an eliminator in August 1944. For good measure, Hawkins beat Gilroy in February 1945. Hawkins then contested the vacant title with Roderick ..... (this is just going off of boxrec) So, even if Gilroy somehow can be regarded as "due" a title shot 1940-'44 (despite a few losses), it's easy to see by 1944-'45 when the title became up for grabs, he lost to a man who would then lose the eliminator to the man who would lose the vacant title fight .... as well as losing to the man who won the eliminator and was in line to fight (and lose) in that vacant title fight. In other words, when the time came, Gilroy had a few chances there to press his claim but he fell short.
