EFA
News from Ireland 2006
Handball and One Wall Fives
Article by Tom O'Connor International Officer, Handball Ireland
(Extract from the 2005-2006 EFA Annual Report).Our Handball Yearbook, to be published in April, carries an account by James Toop on the 1-Wall Fives project in Croydon. The introduction of this simple form of the game was largely responsible for the growth of handball in America and Paul Williams, from the New York Inner City Association has brought players to Ireland and Wales and I believe visited the inaugural Croydon Tournament last year. We have started similar initiatives in our junior schools with a mini handball promotion that will be led by the local clubs in each county. It will give as many children as possible a taste for the game and hopefully be carried forward by these new disciples into the second and third level sectors.
It is very much a case of a restart for us as up to the sixties most people in Ireland would have at some stage ‘tried their hand’ at the game or at least would have seen it played, as most of our courts were outdoors. But the move to indoor facilities, while allowing play at all times and in all weather, had its downside in removing the game from public view and its virtual disappearance as schoolyard play. The wide pool from which our top players graduated was very much restricted and nowadays there are large numbers who have never heard of the sport or else confuse it with team or Olympic handball. Since 1994 when the 1-Wall code was reintroduced we have held National Tournaments each year, made this form part of the triennial World Games and best of all used it to engage with players of other hand / fives codes. We have seen and learned from each other’s play and provided a ‘level playing field’ for meaningful competition at International level.
It gave many of our Handballers quite a shock last December when a team from the Basque Country overcame the Irish International 1-Wall selection in a Tournament played in Tyrone. The Welsh, too, have had successes at our Nationals and in World Championship games in America. The French and Belgium Balle au Mur players have also used 1-Wall to bring young players into their own game. The Italians have added it to their traditional Pallone Elastico, hosting the first Italian Championship last December in Nizza Monferatto and the game has been played in Mexico since Aztec times. James tells me that he hopes to bring some Fives player to Sligo for this year’s Irish Nationals in July and maybe to Winnipeg for the World Games later in the year. I see from your newsletter that the two codes of Fives have come together in the Fives Federation. Hopefully there could also be more engagement between Fives and handball and also between all the different forms of the game played in these islands and in Europe. As said in your newsletter no game can match Fives in all its forms. The Americans call handball the ‘Perfect Game’ – perfect for the development of physical and mental agility (they choose it as the game for their programme of astronaut training) - perfect also for hand-eye coordination (boxers from John L, Sullivan to Mohammed Ali have used as part of their training). John Cavanagh, whose expertise at Fives in London was chronicled by Hazlitt in 1819, reversed the trend by using boxing as conditioning for Fives. And to cap the argument it is to be noted that Ireland’s Triple Crown winning rugby team this year had a number of handballers in its ranks!T.O'C.
Article by Tom O’ Connor, International Officer Handball Ireland.
Created: 28th March 2007 by Mike Fenn
efa@etonfives.co.uk