<em>By Paul Fitzpatrick.</em>
History will be made this weekend when Ireland participates for the first time in the World Frontball Championships, which serve off in Biarritz this Sunday.
Ireland will be represented by reigning Wallball Open Singles champions Catriona Casey and Conor McElduff. The duo will be accompanied to France by GAA Handball President Dessie Keegan as well as some officials from the GAA, with the aim of forging closer links with Frontball’s governing body, the International Federation of Basque Pelota (FIPV).
The party fly out tomorrow (Saturday) and, says Casey, it is hugely exciting to see over 30 countries represented.
“The tournament starts on Sunday but I just saw the draws and I don’t play till Monday. It’s really cool to see the draws, there are so many countries represented. I have never really participated at such an international event,” she told GAAHandball.ie.
“There are 16 in my division, from 16 different countries. I am in a group with the US, Mexico and Costa Rica. It should be interesting, I’ve never played frontball before but I’ve been trying to watch videos online and read up on the rules and things like that.”
Catriona believes this will be a novel experience. While the ball and the court and some of the rules are different – notably, there is a ‘tell-line’ on the front wall which means our kill shots are not permitted in this code – there remains a lot of crossover.
“I’ve never got the chance to play in any of the European wallball tournaments because it has tended to be at a time when I have been focusing on 4-wall. It’s only a two-hour flight, it looks like the weather will be lovely so I’m excited about it.
“It looks very similar to wallball but there are a few key differences. You can’t hit a kill shot, there is a line you have to hit above on the wall. If you hit the lines on the floor, that is out. You also serve from the back of the court, there is a server’s box at the back of the court in the middle. It seems to be rally scoring as well.
“I would have liked to get my hands on a ball before travelling over but unfortunately I didn’t. The ball is leather, hopefully I’ll get a feel for it on Sunday before I start playing on Monday.”
Frontball has been developed by the Basques as a crossover code which can bring together the various forms of handball around the world and it has proven highly popular.
“It does excite me, it will be very interesting. There seems like there is going to be a huge crowd and a great atmosphere. There is even a PlayStation game developed of frontball so it seems like it has a lot of potential to take off.
“Frontball Federation had reached out and invited two Irish players, one male, one female, so that’s how myself and Conor were selected, because we won the Irish Wallball Nationals in Roscommon in July.”
Casey & McElduff at the recent Wallball Irish Nationals
Keegan, meanwhile, sees this weekend as a fact-finding and relationship-building mission.
“Myself and the GAA spoke about a year and a half ago about the possibility of GAA Handball exploring partnerships around the world, not just the traditional countries that we tend to play against in the World Handball Championships, which are still strong and have not been shelved or anything like that.
“We have had communications with the FIPV and European Wallball. We are hosting a European Wallball Tour event in December and this was also part of it, that we would compete in the Frontball World Championships, again for the first time ever.
“Obviously frontball is different to wallball but it’s not a million miles different and this is possibly an opportunity for us to form an alliance with the FIPV to see if we could get more compromises and explore the possibility of Ireland competing regularly in a Frontball World Championships.
“From a GAA Handball perspective, Catriona is playing players from South America, for example, when has she ever played anyone from there?
“Over 30 countries are represented so it’s really exciting, our players are playing against players from all over the world. This is a very, very exciting time and I hope it’s the start of a very interesting journey.”
Keegan believes there is enormous potential for growth.
“I know myself where I’d like it to go, I’m not going into the details yet because I don’t want people to get too excited and there is a long way to go but when you see 30 to 40 countries playing in an event, that brings you to a whole different class of recognition worldwide.
“For Catriona and Conor, it’s a great opportunity. To expect them to do very, very well is going to difficult, this is a different variation and they’ve nobody to train with at home for this but this first tournament is for all of us to explore the possibilities of what could happen.
“We all know the way the Irish are, if we feel that this is something we are going to adopt and take on, everybody knows that we have the best players in the world and if we start to focus on something, we will do very, very well. I am looking forward to hopefully sharing good news with people as the months go on as to where this relationship is possibly going to go.”