Powerful role models in sport

There’s a fact I like to tell people, safe in the knowledge that it will elicit a shocked response. In America, there are age bracket handball tournaments for Over 85s.

I know – isn’t that amazing? And inspiring, too.

And here’s another thing: I’ve seen them – and these old-timers can play. They say in boxing that the last thing to leave a fighter is his punch; the equivalent in handball, I suppose, is power, as in the ability to strike the ball at great speed, and it does not hold true in our game. The power does fade as players get older.

But handball is a game of anticipation and craft as much as anything and that aspect is the last to diminish, which allows old age pensioners to continue operating at a good level.

Back a couple of decades ago, when players reached their mid-40s, they tended to slow down quite a lot. That is no longer the case in handball; a lot of players, right into their late 50s and even beyond, remain ferociously good in the court. For some reason, top-level careers are lasting longer; some of the best players in Ireland right now are well into their 40s.

A few weeks ago, I attended the All-Ireland Masters finals in the new centre at Croke Park. Handball has been waiting for decades for this centre to be built – it was held up by various rows, political disputes too numerous and intricate to get into – but it finally opened its doors recently.

The Masters finals were one of the first major events to be held there. As an occasion, it had everything. The games were as competitive as any you’re likely to see, the standard was high but, still, there was a collegiality to it all. When the matches were over, players posed for photos with their medals alongside children and grandchildren.

The stand-out story came from the Over 70s Doubles finals. Unlike in the States, Over 70s is the oldest age bracket in Irish handball. Cavan have enjoyed success in the grade in recent years through Greg Sheridan and Patsy Hand, who picked up countless provincial and national titles down through the years before hanging up the gloves not long ago.

In the All-Ireland Over 70s final this year, Dublin met Tipperary. It was part of a programme of 30-odd finals and for this one, the gallery was packed.

Representing the Dubs were Eugene Kennedy, a retired physics professor in DCU and father of superstar Eoin, and his partner Ned Flynn, a retired Garda inspector. Eugene, at 75, was the younger of the pair; Ned turns 80 in October.

They played for an hour and 37 minutes and Dublin eventually won it. I watched in awe as the four men dived for the ball, tracked to the back court to retrieve it, put it all on the line to win. The exchanges were fierce and the crowd were going mad.

A few days later, I called Ned for an article I was doing for the GAA. He jokingly referred to himself as “the oldest swinger in town”.

He told me his handball story and his life story; the two are inextricably intertwined. He came from Donard, near the Glen of Imaal in Co Wicklow. An old outdoor court still stands in the village; one of his earliest memories was as a small child, watching his father and uncles playing and retrieving the ball for them when it was hit over the wall.

He went to school in Clonmel, left at 16 and went working with his father as a carpenter. After a few years, he “got fed up” of that and joined the guards in 1964, serving 36 years around Dublin city.

In his early years in the force, he played football for Howth and in the Garda inter-divisional competitions (“They used to kill each other. The dirtiest footballers I ever came across in my life!”) before a back injury sustained in a match in Balgriffin, which later required surgery, saw him hang up the boots and focus on handball.

All-Ireland handball medals were hard to come by in that era, with less grades on offer and more players in the ones there were. His first title came at the age of 44 - in 1987. In the intervening years, he won 13 more All-Irelands in various Masters grades.

Ned was married in 1968 and bought a house in Raheny, where he and his wife have lived ever since. They have three daughters and one son, who sadly died as a small infant.

“He’s still very much a member of the family and we’ll never forget him,” he said.

The story went up on GAA.ie and someone in RTE noticed it. A researcher from the Claire Byrne Show got in touch and last Thursday, there was a feature on the radio about Ned and Eugene; the reporter joined them at a training session at the Na Fianna club, belated national recognition for men who have spent a lifetime playing a sport which tends to operate in the shadows.

In that sense, I liken it to a secret society. Once, it was mainstream but it didn’t move with the times, until we reached a point where a sport of brilliant technicolour was still stuck in the black and white era.

In terms of media coverage, there isn’t much room for sporting sub-cultures any more but the optimist in me believes, or hopes, that maybe the stories are all the richer for that. Where else in Gaelic games do men of 80 do battle for national medals?

Handball attracts a certain kind of person. There are players from all imaginable walks of life but their backgrounds mean nothing when the ref says “play ball”.

There seems to be an above-average number of very interesting people – ‘eccentric’ may not be the right word but there are many singular types of individual in the sport.

It stands to reason - when the door closes and you’re playing singles, you’re on your own. It’s a stage of sorts, for a one-man show – or, in the case of the septuagenarians I watched in Croker, a double act. So, the game is not short on characters.

Another thing most handballers share in common is a deep-seated competitive instinct and if you have that, I don’t think it ever leaves you.

“I like playing competitions to be honest about it, I always did,” Ned told me. And he’s not done yet.

“I think most fellas quit playing competitively around 75 at the oldest. I don’t know anybody the same age as myself. I’ll be 80 now on the 14th of October. And I intend to keep playing for another while.”

If you’re seeking a dose of raw inspiration, google his name and ‘Claire Byrne Show’ and have a listen. You might even end up looking up your nearest handball alley…