Three months ago, Dunne was unveiled as the first person to hold the role in a permanent capacity since Gary Keegan stepped away, nine years ago, and his daily threads — crisp suits and shirts and highly-polished shoes — reflect his standing as a big player in the world of Irish sports admin.

It’s not that he is an office drone.

The role may involve meetings and pie charts and logistics, but Dunne is the bridge between the boardroom and the gym floor. A visit last month to the HP unit’s digs at the Sport Ireland Institute revealed a man comfortable with having a foot planted in each world. Zaur Antia, the head coach, took the training session. Close to a dozen elite male and female boxers danced to his tune, zig zagging between heavy bags, sparring across the various state-of-the-art rings, and hanging on to every one of the Georgian’s words.

Dunne was more than just an observer.

There was a word in the ear here for team captain, Joe Ward, a quick chat there with Antia. It would be easy to misinterpret that as a former world champion who just can’t help but blur the lines, but Dunne knows his boundaries, and that there has to be separation.

“I have no interest in throwing the tracksuit and pads on. But I know what good looks like. Zaur is very happy with that and that’s very important. We’ve actually created a good bond between the two of us, in the last few months. We’re syncing and getting on really well,” Dunne says. The importance of all this can’t be overplayed.

Dunne has taken on a role in a sport in which punches are landed and points scored outside the ring as much as in it. Like so many bodies before them, the IABA is finding that the move from the old amateur, volunteer days to a professionally-run machine can be troubling. He wasn’t in the job a wet week when it all exploded in his face. Dunne had chosen national super-heavyweight champion, Martin Keenan, for Ireland’s European championship squad. Central Council said it should have been Dean Gardiner.

Two gunfighters, one town. Someone was eating lead.

The fallout was nuclear. Gardiner ultimately won a box-off to make the Euros, but the behind-the-scenes machinations have, to cut a very long story short, ended with Dunne’s position strengthened. He will now be the ultimate arbiter of selection. Not only that, but he will be the team manager at all major events going forward, too, the Olympics included. He was the man in control at the Europeans, in Kharkiv, and he was the guy overseeing the Irish squad, when the World Championships kicked off in Hamburg, yesterday.

“It makes sense for the man who is around the team all the time (to be there), the man who knows what the team are looking for, the man who can spot when one of his athletes is a bit down, because he’s sat with them for the last couple of years — or the last couple of months, in my case — and understands how somebody is interacting or is not themselves … It makes sense for that person to be with the team. If I hadn’t have gone to the European Championships as team leader, I wouldn’t have had that access to the athletes,” Dunne says. As a precedent, that seems watertight.

Dunne’s appointment wasn’t greeted with universal joy, but his boxing knowledge was unquestioned and he earned early brownie points when he convinced Joe Ward to stay amateur, and when he prompted Sport Ireland to change tack and fund the talented light welterweight, Sean McComb.

It’s clear whose corner he is in.

The success of the senior men’s squad at the Europeans, in Kharkiv — they won a gold and two bronze medals — has added greater momentum, and a five-strong team will be disappointed not to earn more podium visits at the Worlds, in Hamburg, this next week.

D

unne has smarts and he gives little away. He spoke to the media just weeks before being given the job and deflected with ease any suggestion that he might even be interested in the role, and he is young enough to learn on the job.

His experience of management lies somewhere between limited and non-existent, but he has soaked up plenty in his five seasons working with Gavin and the Dublin footballers, even if his exact role in that set-up has never really been explained.

“You start to see man-management skills there, from working with individuals,” he says of that experience. “I’ve settled into the job well and dealt with any issues that have arisen, the big one being Joe. But, yeah, man-management is a big part of the job. Making sure not just that the boxers are happy, but that the coaches are happy. We need everyone to be in a good place for the whole team to perform and, as much as it’s an individual sport, it is a team and that’s what we’re trying to create here.

“It’s a team culture and a team environment, in that we support each other and hold each other accountable and they do that. We’ve got so many fantastic individuals and some great leaders in this squad, really good leaders, who have good voices.

“When you’re around them all the time, you see them talking and especially new guys who come — male or female — you see the more senior guys coming over to them and yapping to them, telling them this is how we do things now. And things are changing here, most certainly,” Dunne says.

That culture is stoked by bringing all boxers — male, female, youths and juniors — together to train and the move from the beloved, but decrepit, National Stadium to the institute is a major upgrade. Also on the list is some on-site accommodation.

One of the most revealing sights on RTÉ’s ‘Road to Rio’ documentary series was the image of Ireland’s elite boxers crammed four or five to a room at their hotel digs, in an era when recovery is deemed just as important as training or nutrition.

“We talk about our goals, here, every day and that is to be the best high-performance team in the world. It’s aspirational, but you need to set your sights high all the time and, to achieve that, we need to have on-site accommodation. Living out of a hotel isn’t ideal. You want a home from home where they can go after sessions and eat and relax. There are facilities on-site that we are looking at but, again, it will take a wee bit of time to get that across the line,” Dunne says. His tone is upbeat, always.

Dunne talks enthusiastically about the fourth-place finish of the senior men at the Europeans — with a gold and two bronze — and the performances of the female junior and youth teams earlier in the summer. Those underage brigades brought home a gold, a silver, and three bronze.

Olympic sport is all about identifying the low-hanging fruit. What is the most likely source of medals? Dunne sees that with the female programme. The “return on investment” could be huge, he says, and the talent is there. The gold, silver, and bronze mined at the EUs, in Italy this month, were more proof of that.

All of which is a far cry from the layers of doom and gloom that surrounded the team, and the sport as a whole, after the team’s disastrous experiences in Rio, the loss of Walsh, and the loss of so many stars to the professional ranks, and the constant bickering and politicking by those supposed to be providing leadership at the top.

The ‘talent drain’, for one, wasn’t something that kept Dunne up at night.

“People talk about that being a negative, but that happens every Olympic cycle, or every second one,” Dunne says of the changes in personnel. “People go pro and people step away. That’s always happened. You look at Wayne McCullough, you look at Michael Carruth, myself. Unfortunately, I didn’t go to the Olympic Games.

“Andy Lee. It’s always happened, so this is nothing new, but the thing is we’re producing exceptional talent. So Michael Conlan, Paddy Barnes, Katie (Taylor) are huge losses to any team, but it’s gonna happen. Jeez, you can’t stop it. That’s just the way that works.

“We started afresh with a new team, but this team is already progressing. Boxing is already coming back up. We’re trying to do the right things, in terms of preparation, and where we’re going and how we’re getting ready for major championships. And our athletes are enjoying it,” Dunne says.

All of which is worthless, if the coaching isn’t right.

Irish athletics is the obvious example of a sport that has failed to get out of the blocks at elite level, because the know-how just isn’t there, but boxing has a better record, stretching back to the likes of Nicolas Cruz, through to Billy Walsh and Antia. The loss of Walsh to America, and Eddie Bolger to Germany, could, and should, have been avoided, but Dunne still has one of the most respected technical coaches in the world, in Antia, who has turned down lucrative offers to remain in Ireland.

“Zaur is fantastic, possibly the best coach in the world, and we need to use him in the right way. Not just expose our boxers to him, but our coaches around the country and allow them to take that skillset back to their clubs and improve all our boxers around the country,” Dunne says.

Logic hasn’t always been a given in Irish boxing, but, in this, it seems the sport has finally stumbled on the right path. Antia, who had to step into the void and deal with so much muck outside the ropes, when Walsh left, has, once again, been able to devote his full attention and abundant talent to life inside the ropes, and ignore any of the outside noise, the odd word in his ear from Dunne aside.