Top-level handball has becomes a shooter's game, argues Paul Fitzpatrick, and in Robbie McCarthy and Charly Shanks, the crowd in Kingscourt today are lucky to witness two of the finest Irish handballers the sport has seen.
The characters in the ground breaking HBO series The Wire could, just as easily, have been talking about handball. The scene: the back of a car, two African-American gangsters talking, planning an assassination related to the turf war playing out between rival drug gangs.
Cutty, an ex-con who has been selected to carry out a hit, is handed a gleaming revolver with which to do the deed. He turns to Slim Charles, the foot soldier ordering the shooting, and expresses surprise that he won’t be using a .38, his preferred weapon before he was locked up.
The reason, he is told, is that the revolver holds more bullets than his own out dated gun of choice.
“The game done changed,” he sighs, wistfully, in his Maryland drawl.
“Game’s the same,” comes the reply, “just got more fierce.”
Handball, too, has gotten more fierce. Gone are the days when players employed three-wall Z serves or when an overhand to the ceiling was classified, almost, as an offensive shot. Improvements in courts – particularly, an increase in their temperature – and the new, faster ball has made handball a shooter’s game.
The Celtic Tiger may have left a trail of misery in its path but, curious as it sounds, it also sped up the progress of the top Irish handballers. Because with cheaper flights to the US and more cash on the hip when we got there, Irish players flooded to American tournaments and quickly began to ape, and then better, the two-handed, attacking American style.
Younger fans who watched Paul Brady dismantle the field in New York last weekend with ease may be surprised to learn that it’s only just over 12 years since the Cavan man became the first Irish player to win a pro stop; that was in Milwaukee in December 2002.
That marked the turning point in the modern evolution of the sport at the top level; looking back now, in March 2015, we can reiterate that immortal line from The Wire – truly, the game done changed.
Which brings us to today’s highlight, the senior All-Ireland final between Robbie McCarthy and Charly Shanks.
Shanks is partial to playing the odd roof shot and McCarthy has soft hands in front court and can take the pace off the ball and dump it dead-weight into the corners but both men are essentially aggressive, ambidextrous shooters whose first instinct is to find the bottom board.
We imagine the old pioneers venturing out west looking on in awe at the offensive skills on show; as fans, we should be thankful that the trailblazers came from the States and dragged up the level of play to that and beyond. We are spoiled to have players like McCarthy and Shanks, fantastic athletes and outrageously skilled handball players.
And they're not the only ones. The senior race, in the post-Brady domestic era especially, has never been tighter; on court, though, it's kill or be killed, and both today's finalists have killed that ball lower and more often than the rest of the field this season.
That's why they are where they are, the last pair standing from a championship which started with anything up to half a dozen potential winners.
Think we're exaggerating? Look down the drawsheet – last year's finalist Diarmaid Nash, Galway's Martin Mulkerrins, Brian Carroll and the veteran Eoin Kennedy, who has taken back the big alley throne and is a former small court number one, can all bang with the best.
For all the talk of this being the most democratic era in recent memory – and bear in mind that Killian Carroll was a live contender but was forced to withdraw through injury on the eve of the championship – there can only be one champion.
That man will be the one who imposes his game on the other today. For Robbie, fighting pride of Mullingar who recently passed out of the Naval base at Hawboline in Cork, that means ending rallies with his second shot.
McCarthy loves nothing better than to force an opponent back with serves from his cannon-like right hand and then mix his fire with ice, deftly dropping the ball into the corners with such precision that even the gamest, hustling get-artists struggle to stay in the rally.
He can mix it up, of course; you don't win what the Westmeath man has without that ability. McCarthy carries a dangerous underhand over from the 60x30 court, which allows him to adjust mid-swing even when his feet aren't set.
What Lurgan's Shanks, now settled in Belfast after a couple of years in the Big Apple, brings is superb conditioning and a unique wristy style – he gets in close to the ball when it's coming off the back wall (arguably his best shot and definitely the one which broke Nash's heart in the semi) and can generate huge swerves, both natural and reverse.
But maybe we're getting too technical. The beginning and end of the matter is this: the final will be a war, of that we're sure, and the player who can get into the trenches, soak up whatever heavy shelling comes his way and come back over the top for more will be the one still standing when the final point is scored.
This is the biggest occasion the sport can throw up and that sort of nervous tension can do funny things to sportsmen. Robbie is the champion and has done it before, but heavy is the crown. He is now the hunted, and not the hunter, and must respond accordingly.
Then again, in the orange corner, Shanks has also been here before, twice, will know exactly what the big day throws up, and will have steeled himself against any negative thoughts. But Charly is a family man now and the clock is ticking on his senior career – will that pressure come to bear, throw his shots horribly off by that millimetre or two?
We don't know the answer – as of now, no-one does. Until the thwock of rubber signals throw-in at around 4pm or so, it's all guesswork.
As for the action itself, an epic is anticipated. Every top-level match now, as we've explained, is a shoot-out compared to those mighty battles thrown up by the generations who went before. So, it goes without saying that both champion and challenger will need to make his shots when the chances present themselves. After all, kills win points but consistent kills win matches.
Shanks and McCarthy each hold wins over the other and the clash in their respective approaches is intriguing; styles make fights and this one could not be poised more beautifully.
Both men are primed and both could well explode this afternoon. When the smoke clears, though, the player who holds his head and shows the ruthlessness of a hired hitman – just like the gunslinging dope-peddlers we mentioned earlier – will be bringing home the Gael Linn Cup.
Other than that, nothing else is certain.