Foot and mouth and the hand of destiny

Paul Fitzpatrick

Feelings, not events, are what linger longest and brightest on the memory. When I was 17, to quote the song, it was a very good year. I was studying for my Leaving Cert in St Pat’s, playing handball every day.

Before school, at lunchtime and that evening again, before the bus came. I couldn’t get enough.

My doubles partner was Sean Johnston, who went on, of course, to play senior inter-county football for many years and win 10 Senior Championships for Cavan Gaels. He was one of those lads who could turn his hand to any sport and excel.

For him, handball was a pastime for which he had a natural aptitude but which he was never likely to keep up for a long time given his football prowess. For me, it was something I just adored.

Now, handball is a game for life. In the United States, there is often an Over 80s grade in their Nationals. People are always amazed when I tell them that.

Of course, playing sport as you get older is a social thing but it’s blasé to dismiss it as just that. People involved in sport are by their nature competitive and that’s an itch that must be scratched. Sometimes you’ll win, more times you’ll lose, but to be competing, even in the lowest grade, is a special feeling. As Paul Brady likes to say, pressure is a privilege.

As a teenager, I was mad about handball, and football. I thought about them all the time. I was in thrall to handball in particular – how it was just you on your own, or with a doubles partner, and how the game took us around the country. The craic in the car, the buzz of getting away and feeling like an adult.

When we were 14, we went to Wexford for a weekend for a Féile competition and, two years later, Fr Gilhooly, our coach, brought a couple of us to Croke Park for the first time on a Friday evening to watch Brady in action. It was Mecca, hallowed ground. I was hooked, forever more.

I was always chasing the other handballers in my age group in school but I had an advantage in that most of them were much better footballers than me and, as the years went on, I stuck with it and got a little bit closer all the time. When I was 16, we lost an Ulster doubles final – we should have won, I had tonsillitis – against Antrim.

The following year, we were in the U17 grade, which was weaker. We knew we had a good chance of going all the way because our friends Conor Rabbitt and Kevin Downes had won that All-Ireland the year before.

We beat Monaghan in the first game and then Tyrone in the Ulster final in Scotstown. Next up was Kerry in the All-Ireland semi-final, which was to be played in Tulla in Clare.

I cannot sufficiently describe how excited I was. My first All-Ireland semi-final, 150 miles down the road, which would require an overnight stay. This was the pre-internet days (in Redhills anyway). My mother got on the phone to relations in the Banner county and got some numbers for B&Bs. All was set in stone. Friday evening, we were hitting the road.

In class, I couldn’t concentrate all week. I haven’t a great memory for handball matches I’ve played in – they all blur into one – but I distinctly remember those few days, getting my gear ready and togging out at home in the evenings just for the hell of it. The innocence of it. The Foot and Mouth crisis, which was raging at the time, never even entered my head.

Fate intervenes
And then, on Thursday evening, the phone rang. Fr John. Word had arrived from on high, the games were off for the foreseeable future and that was it.

Recent events have brought all of this back. Coronavirus is a lot more deadly than Foot and Mouth was but strictly in the sporting sense, the effect is the same. It’s a sickener.

For me, the handball season was over. I had never played 60x30 handball at that stage and One Wall was still in its infancy so that was it for six months, a lifetime at that age. That June, I sat my Leaving Cert and worked in Tractamotors for the summer. I now had my own money for going out. I didn’t save a penny.

One Tuesday in September, I was fixing a puncture when a song on the radio was interrupted with news that a second plane had hit the Twin Towers in New York. Was that a big deal? It must have been, judging by the reaction.

On the Thursday, I enrolled in UCD. By now, five months on, our All-Ireland semi-final against Kerry had been refixed and I figured that I better seek out the handball alley considering I hadn’t stood in one since April.

I went down to the sports centre in Belfield and, walking past the door of the head of GAA’s office, saw it was ajar. I stuck my head in and the late Dave Billings was at his desk. “Where are the handball alleys?” I asked him.

“Do you play handball? I need someone to help run the club. Sit down,” he said.

We chatted for about 15 minutes. I told him proudly that I had an All-Ireland semi-final coming up. He asked me did I want some UCD gear for the occasion and I told him we had to wear our Cavan jerseys. To my amazement, he then took out a chequebook and wrote me one for £100.

“That’s an investment on my part. Buy some gear with that and I’ll be looking for you to get this club off the ground again.”

I left his office, played some handball (“tipped the ball around” is how it’s described in the game) with three Travellers who used to nip in and play for free when they got a chance. I remember distinctly that one had no shorts and played in his boxers. Another experience; it was all new to me.

The sun was shining as I left the alley, cash on the hip, and met a friend of mine from school who had enrolled in Galway but was coming up for the night to go out. We spent half the evening in the computer rooms – the novelty of having internet access – and then hit the student bar,
putting a major dent in the ton Billings had given me. It was exhilarating but it was a bad start to college life for a boy who couldn’t boil an egg.

Within six weeks, I had dropped out and was back in the study hall in St Pat’s. From student nights and drinks promotions to dusting down my old uniform. Talk about a reality check...

The only good thing was that I got back playing handball. We trained for the doubles a couple of times a week and won our All-Ireland semi-final, which was played at Nenagh GAA grounds, where D’Unbelievables were shooting a sketch with the Offaly hurler Joe Dooley (I think).

Finally, on January 17 the following year, a month before turning 18 and 11 months since the competition started, we scraped home in the All-Ireland final, this time against Wexford in Croke Park.

Feelings, as I say, are what we remember most. The heartbreak of having the biggest match of my life called off turned out, in a roundabout way, to change everything. For the better, I like to think.

Back at St Pat’s on the Monday, myself and Fr John wrote out, long-hand, a report on our win for the Celt. Soon enough, I did my Leaving again and ended up getting the points to do a journalism course and ended up working here.

And 18 years on, I’m still playing handball…