IT was an altogether different homecoming. Last year, Darren Sutherland returned to his Navan home a champion, an Olympian crowned in glory. Yesterday, he returned in tragedy.

At Balreask Manor, you would never have known a fallen hero had made his final return. The manicured housing estate, deserted in a fog of drizzle, showed no sign of activity.

Then, at 11.15am, the hearse crept around the corner, followed by two black Jaguars. The Sutherland family gathered in the driveway. There were no crowds, no adoring fans. A mother and daughter stood respectfully on the other side of the road, as if representing a wider community united in grief.

Yesterday, the Sutherlands remained behind closed doors to grieve, showing no desire to talk to the media.

Today, the 27-year-old's remains will be removed to Fitzsimon's Funeral Home where the public, with memories of better times, can pay their last respects.

At 6.30pm this evening, he will make his last journey, to St Mary's Church, before his burial tomorrow.

However, when Sutherland is laid to rest, so much more is bound to be kept alive: memories of last yera in Beijing, where he won his Olympic bronze medal, and those pictures of a smiling young man basking in the rewards of ambition and hard graft.

However, there is an impending war of words between the family and the fighter's training team.

It is unclear exactly who from his British training camp will arrive at tomorrow's funeral. What is clear, though is that both Frank Maloney, his manager, and Brian Lawrence, his trainer, are not welcome.

Maloney, who discovered Sutherland's body in his Kent flat last week, cannot make it, having been instructed by doctors not to fly after suffering a heart attack. Some of his family members are expected to attend and Lawrence too will make the trip.

Speaking to the Sunday Tribune, Lawrence raised the same, now familiar, questions over Sutherland's state of mind, believing that such suicidal tendencies do not materialise out of nowhere.

"It happened so rapidly and it was so severe," he said. "It's not the first time. Someone doesn't get that kind of depression just like that at 27. It doesn't just come like that."

Lawrence also revealed that Sutherland's pending fight next month had been cancelled even though the fighter hadn't yet been told.

"He wouldn't have been ready," he said.

But his team were rallying around, they say, and had prepared a training session in Portugal for later this week.

"We were going to go after he saw a specialist, if he was OK. Frank has a villa over there; we were going to go out there and do running and bag work, no sparring, just so that we could all be around him out there.

"We didn't know if he was lonely or what so we thought if we all went out there we would have been around him 24/7."

Foremost too on their minds was Sutherland's increasingly erratic attitude towards fighting.

"One minute he was saying that this was what he was meant to do, he was a born fighter," recalled Lawrence. "But then the next minute the opposite. Whoever he was talking to last, that was his opinion. His mind was just switching, switching; it happened so rapidly."

But this may not be how Sutherland's family see it. By all accounts, relations between the two sides have collapsed. His father Tony says he has a story to tell and will do just that once he lays his son to rest.

In an interview early last week, Tony said his son was unsettled in his situation.

"Darren had lost confidence in himself as a fighter and he was worried he wouldn't be able to step up to the fight," he said.

"He felt Brian [Lawrence] was spending more time with another fighter and not enough time preparing Darren for his next fight. Darren was getting depressed about this.

"His trainer was moving him from a six-round fight to an eight-rounder with a chap who had a 50/50 record. Darren was not worried about that fight; he was worried that he was not getting the proper training."

While more details are almost certain to emerge, this weekend's story is simply one of tragedy and the homecoming of an icon, for all the wrong reasons.