Sheffield boxing gym fights school bullying

Owner Glyn Rhodes first teamed up with The Star to launch a "Boxing against Bullying" campaign, a decade ago.

Still committed to helping to tackle the issue, Rhodes - who candidly admits he was sometimes a bully himself as a pupil at Firth Park school half a century ago - wants to put something back into the community.

"The campaign was triggered again when one of the parents of our kids at the gym told us about their son who was being bullied at school," he said.

"It turned out that the school's idea of dealing with it was to let the bully go out to play but keep the child who was being bullied in.

"That appeared wrong to me - should it not be the other way round?

"The mum agreed and the situation got us talking again about the campaign we used to do a few years ago, with the help of The Star.

"Now we are going back into schools, junior and senior, to discuss the effects of bullying with the kids.

"I don't want to go in there and lecture the kids- it would go in one ear and out the other - we want them to take something positive away.

"We will take boxing gloves in, a couple of our professional and amateurs, and let the kids have a spar with the kids."

Glyn's message will be refined and guided by child psychologists from Reflective Minds, a Sheffield-based company providing therapeutic services.

"I don't want to be telling kids the wrong information, so we are using their philosophies.

"Bullies like to do what they do in secret so the first thing we have to do is to make the abuse known: we ask the kids to tell a parent, teacher...most schools have welfare officers.

"If they can't get help they should speak to police if it is a criminal offence. Assault can be physical, verbal, mental, online; there are lots of different kinds.

"We want to achieve awareness at as many schools as possible."

Glyn accepts his own track record as a teen wasn't perfect: "When we were kids growing up and someone hit you, hit them back, but that is not regarded as the modern way of dealing with it.

"I know it might seem strange all this coming from me.

"When I was at Firth Park school I did the bullying.

"On my first day in senior school I got beat up to the corridor - I could take you there to that corridor now. I was ragged and slapped around just for being a first-day kid.

"There were two groups - you could join these guys who get bullied or hang around with those who did the bullying. I am ashamed I hung around with the bullying gang and, now, I am not happy about that" said Glyn, who runs a successful gym in Hillsborough.

"But we are doing something to help the kids of today, from this moment on."