Excitement is building ahead of the Festival of Handball which serves off in Kingscourt next Friday (March 18) and runs right through to Sunday and will feature 30 All-Ireland finals in various grades.
GAA Handball National Manager John Kelly is expecting a fantastic weekend of action.
“This is a very exciting venture for GAA Handball. We’re breaking away from the tradition of having finals in many different venues over a weekend and it promises to be an incredible weekend of handball action that will give all supporters and players the chance to meet, play and socialise as well as compete for All-Ireland titles under the one roof,” stated Kelly.
“It’s something we haven’t tried before but it’s only by trying these things that we’ll know if they work. I’m pretty confident it will work and I’m pretty confident that it will be an excellent weekend of handball.”
There were a number of motivating factors in the decision, including finances and also the necessity to attract large crowds in order the showcase the elite players.
“We’ve looked at the association as a business model over the past few years and where we have been falling down in terms of income and one of those areas is gate receipts. And if you burrow down a bit further into that, we’ve been getting very poor crowds at a lot of our All-Ireland finals and it’s because there have been fixtures happening all across the country,” he said.
“This weekend, for example, there are four or five different players from one Tyrone club in different finals. Two of them could have been in Wexford, say, two could have been up in Tyrone and another one could be in the west somewhere, depending on who they’re playing.
“In that case the club can’t support all five or six players. We were spreading out the support base meaning that supporters were only able to choose one or two games to go and see. It was also happening at Open level where we really weren’t getting the crowds that we had hoped to get for the standard of handball that we were seeing.
“Last year we had an incredible All-Ireland Senior Singles final where Robbie McCarthy won 21-20 in the third game and while Kingscourt was relatively packed, it could have been even more packed had there not been other games on elsewhere.
“We took a decision to bring the finals to one venue, people can watch as much or as little handball as they want. The crowds should increase, the income should increase but overall, what we’re looking for is the festival atmosphere – the enjoyment of the whole weekend should be a lot better.”
Ticket Pricing
| Friday Only Pass: | Adult: €10 Juv/OAP: €5 |
| Saturday Only Pass exc Open Finals: | Adult: €10 Juv/OAP: €5 |
| Open Finals ticket: | Adult: €20 Juv/OAP: €10 |
| Sunday Only Pass: | Adult: €10 OAP: €5 Juv: Free |
| Weekend Pass including Open Finals: | Adult: €35 Juv/OAP: €20 |
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Ticket Information:
- Tickets can only be purchased online from the GAA Handball Shop
- For all queries please contact Brigid in the GAA Handball Office on 01-8192385. Only tickets that have been paid for in full will be guaranteed
- Tickets purchased on the weekend are on a first come first served basis.
- If the Open Finals sell out there will be free access to a big screen in Court 3 for anyone who wishes to watch the game.