Gypsy Empire by Eamon Dillon

Author:Eamon Dillon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448168125
Publisher: Transworld

11

Unfinished Business

Fighting men don’t enjoy a quiet life. The violence that defines them in the bare-knuckle bouts tends to follow them into their everyday circumstances. Paddy Doherty has lost count of how many times he has been hospitalized, and he has had more than one close brush with death. James Quinn-McDonagh has been effectively exiled to London. Big Joe Joyce has been shot at and had clumps of flesh ripped from his arm and face.

In that regard Paddy ‘Jaws’ Ward is fully qualified as a Traveller fighting man. Jaws inherited his nickname from his father, who was given it after he lost his teeth at the age of thirty-six. Jaws and his father were once the targets of an assassination attempt at the funeral of Patrick ‘Skillet’ Ward in Sligo in 1999. The Wards claimed that they had tried to approach members of a rival UK clan – the closely related Bumbee McDonaghs – at the funeral, when they were ambushed and gunmen opened fire. One man, Patrick ‘Deuce’ Ward, was shot in the back and died.

Four men were charged with the murder but acquitted after a series of trials. An independent eyewitness claimed Jaws had been armed with a slash hook, which the defence barrister said he had ‘wielded like Harry Potter’s wand’. When the McDonaghs were acquitted, Jaws senior was heard to shout: ‘The state done us down. An eye for eye, lads.’

Around the end of 2006, when Big Joe Joyce and Ainey McGinley were finishing off old business, Jaws Ward was serving time in Castlerea Prison in Roscommon. He had been jailed for threatening to shoot his cousin John ‘Jokes’ Ward in Ballybane, County Galway, in March 2006. He had been spotted by officers dumping a shotgun and a machete after a shot had been fired at John ‘Jokes’ Ward. At his trial he admitted possessing the weapons, but denied threatening to kill his cousin. Ironically, the violence had erupted after Jaws’s brother Laurence was shot at a bare-knuckle fight in Manchester in 2005. Following that there were a number of incidents and skirmishes between the two factions which led to guns being used both in Ireland and the UK. There was tight security at Jaws’s trial in Galway, with thirty uniformed and armed Gardaí on duty at the courthouse. Everyone going into the court building was searched, including lawyers and journalists. Jaws got a three-year sentence.

Meanwhile, as Barney ‘The Gorilla’ McGinley was strutting his stuff after his victory over John Joyce, Jaws was getting restless in jail. During his tantrum after being taunted by David Joyce, Barney had mentioned that he had fought Jaws when they were eighteen. The implication that he was a better fighter than Jaws was something that Jaws couldn’t let go. Jaws took advantage of the prison gym to get into serious training, reportedly working out twice a day. From behind the prison walls in the west of Ireland his challenge went out in April 2008. Once he had been released he would take on Barney.

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