Tennis, Handball & Lacrosse

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Did you know that our lacrosse team has been doing very well in the European championship?

Here is the report:

Story by Alan Ryan

The Irish lacrosse teams have been doing very well of late, with the women’s team finishing 8th and the mens team winning a silver medal against a strong English side in the final of the European Championships in Amsterdam.

The performances of both teams were acknowledged by Minister of State for Tourism & Sport Michael Ring recently when he said “I would like to congratulate everyone involved in lacrosse in Ireland. As a minority sport, it relies on the support and dedication of a large number of volunteers. It’s great to see their efforts being rewarded with this achievement.”

Among Jer. Kennelly’s huge collection of photographs is this one of a lacrosse team. Could it be that we had such a teamsport in these parts at one stage?

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Where would we be without sport?

Junior Griffin has put together a history of Listowel Handball. These notes that he shares with us here are his own memories of great times on the Handball alley.

HANDBALL CLUB HISTORY

John (Junior) Griffin

When was handball first played in Listowel?
When was the alley (as it is more commonly called) built by the banks of the
Feale River?

Regretfully, the answer to these questions
concerning the founding of the game of handball in Listowel has been lost in
the passage of time. No records or minute books of that time are available and
most of those who might have played handball in years gone by are long since
gone.

But one thing is sure, the alley was built
and handball played in Listowel in the late 19^th or the early years
of the 20^th century and the one name that those of us who played the
game in the 1940’s to the 1960’s were told about was that a club founder member
was the late Joe James, O’Connell’s Avenue.

The Listowel Alley was, of course, a three
wall alley, 60ft. by30ft, with the front wall being part of the “Big Bridge”
and it was to this that the two side walls were joined, with wire netting placed
on top of all three walls to prevent the ball from being struck on to the road
or into the river. Incidentally, the railings that can still be seen on top of
the side walls are part of the Lartigue rail track which was closed down in
1924.   

In a message written for the match
programme to celebrate the opening of the Sportsfield football pitch, now the
Frank Sheehy Park, on May 15^th, 1960 by the late Dr. Seamus Wilmot,
Registrar of the National University of Ireland, Dr Wilmot wrote;

“When
I recall the Listowel that I knew before the First World War, two places come
immediately to my mind—the Ball Alley and the Sportsfield.

So do
other places, of course, like Kenny’s Heights, The Long Inch, the Knight’s and
Pat’s Field, but the reason, I think, that my memory jumps firstly to the
Sportsfield (or The Field, as it was always known) and the Alley, is that they
were the only two places where we enjoyed freedom, unrestricted in the case of
the Alley, conditional as to the Sportsfield, the limitation as regards the
latter only serving to give its authorized enjoyment an edge that was not
always to be found in the unalloyed freedom of the Alley.” 

In the same programme Bryan McMahon was
described as a “well known handballer and hurler” in his youth”

So, as one can glean from Dr. Wilmot’s
message handball was played in Listowel before the First World War.

In the nineteen- teens and the twenties,
other names associated with Listowel Handball along with Joe James, Seamus
Wilmot and Bryan McMahon were Frank Sheehy, Brendan Macauley, Michael Keane,
Vangy O’Hanlon and Tony Chute to name just a few.

In a conversation about handball in
Listowel Bryan McMahon passed on the following story to this writer many years
ago.

It seems that a son of a local business
man, who shall remain nameless, was an ardent handball fanatic but his skills
at the game left a lot to be desired.

Indeed, he was looked upon as a soft touch
by other players of that era.                      

Many, with no money in their pocket, would
bet him a £1 per game and give him a handicap of plus 20 and the serve out of a
game of 21, would then contrive to lose the first game, but on a doubles or
quits basis would collect the £4 at the end of the second game. As one player
remarked years later, it was his drinking money for the week.

The father was told of the son’s handball
gambling and he was packed off to Argentina for a number of years on business.

To quote Bryan; “I went down to the Alley
on one summer’s evening for a game and I could see someone seated at the Alley
wearing a large sombrero. On getting closer, lo and behold, I saw that “xxxx”
was back in town and back to the place he loved so well.”

But whether the lesson was learnt or not is
another story.

More tomorrow……..