With the Féile na nGael drawing near, PAUL FITZPATRICK looks back on a momentous trip to Wexford back in 1998 which sowed the seeds for a handball obsession.
My name is Paul Fitzpatrick, and I am a handball addict. I have been hooked since my first hit as a child, that sweet rush of one kill after a dozen skips into the floor keeping me going back for more.
I’ve tried giving up on several occasions but it’s not easy. In college in DIT, in a house with Padraig Gaffney, Brian Carroll and Mark McGowan, handball was everywhere, making weaning myself off it all the more difficult.
Step out of the bedroom and there were some stinking gloves drying on the banister. Come down to the hall and someone had dragged a table aside to create a little alley, complete with a list of rules. Walk into the living room and there was a stack of DVDs, a couple of trophies (not mine), balls and gear littered around like debris on a bomb site.
One summer, I abstained for a couple of months, played some football to take my focus off it, but while the mind was willing, the flesh – like the serve, incidentally – was weak.
Forgive me, Lord, for I know not what I do. There’s strength in the fact that I’m not alone – in a way, we’re all junkies in this crazy sport, gripped by the sport of the chase, seeking that thrill again.
My therapist tells me to go back to the first time. That was in Wexford, in June 1998. There were four of us on the Féile na nGael team – myself, Patrick Clerkin, Padraig Cahill and Seanie Johnston. Our coach was Fr John Gilhooly.
A few weeks before, we had a panel of six fellas training, all of us first and second year students in St Pat’s, Cavan. I was number six in the rankings, a distant sixth at that. In fact, were it a race, I probably would have been lapped.
Then, one of the lads broke his ankle and another, my friend James Briody, was roped into playing hurling and, in a bombshell which led the sports bulletins, in our eyes anyway, he defected from our panel in favour of the Mullahoran hurlers on the eve of the tournament. Suddenly, I was parachuted in at four, which was good news for me but not necessarily for the rest of the lads, as the look in their eyes made clear. With James seemed to go our chances of Division 2 glory...
Looking back, the impact that one tournament had on my life is clear from the fact that I can remember every detail of the trip. We left on a Thursday morning, June 18, at 11am. My mother bought me a wallet in Dunne’s Stores before we left, with a crisp £20 note inside. Heading south to the tournament in Patrick’s brother Frank’s snow white Merc, cash in the pocket and Puff Daddy’s recently-released Come With Me blaring on the radio,I felt like Floyd Mayweather, albeit with a slightly smaller entourage. It was all new, all exciting; I never knew a buzz like it.
I played doubles with Clerkin, who was capable of beating me 21-0 in training games. My job was simple – serve and then move out of the way and let Pat take over. Our host club was Ballyhogue – the lady of the house was from Kerry and fed us orange juice and croissants the next morning.
(French cuisine hadn’t yet hit Redhills at the time; when I came home, like an adventurer returning having charted some new, remote territory, I informed my mother of this exotic bread-like fare. Soon, my brother and I were wolfing croissants two at a time.)
So, we landed at the alley in Bree to practise that afternoon and the action started in the evening. In the group, we came through against the locals, scraped past Ballymacelligot from Kerry and then Carrickmore from Tyrone.
In the semi-final the next evening, Sean and Padraig won the first game 21-13 against Tulla from Clare but before we knew it, Pat and I were 14-1 down and, when we took a time-out, Cahill, watching from the gallery and convinced that we were crashing out, stormed out past us, tears rolling down his cheeks in bad temper.
Then Patrick – who also won the skills competition - took over and we caught the lads on the line to get through. And in the final, we beat the Kerry boys – who had a mesmerising red-haired lad on the left called Gary O’Connor, who was younger and better than all of us – on aggregate.
On the way home, we stopped along the road somewhere and filled the cup with strawberries.
The sun shone all week; the next day, the five of us went to Clones for the Armagh v Derry Ulster semi-final, landing in Monaghan afterwards to go to the cinema, followed by a feed in McDonald’s (another first for me) and back to Clerkin’s to play tennis until it was dark.
A couple of weeks later, Fr John tracked down a presentation photo – there were no camera phones so it took a few phone calls to get one posted to Cavan - and the Anglo-Celt, where I now work, carried a photo of the four of us with the cup. At home, we bought three copies. The picture is still sellotaped to the door of my old bedroom in my mother’s house.
That was 17 years ago. Chances are, I wouldn’t have played handball afterwards were it not for that weekend in Wexford. Padraig and Patrick are still at it, too, and ‘Jelly’ Johnston probably would be had he not played inter-county football for a decade.
When June comes around every year, I think about that trip, the friendships we made the fun we had. Ten years later, James Brady and I brought a team to Laois for the Féile again, and they won Division 4. Four years after that, our lads won Division 3 in CityWest. They still talk about it, even though I think I was more excited than they were.
The Féile is unique. Time moves on but kids are still kids and the format still captures their imaginations.
If you want to produce your own generation of handball addicts, children who are captivated by the game and will carry that passion with them into adulthood, don’t miss this chance. You will not regret it.
If you want to get involved in this years Feile na Gael, please see information at the below link.