After one of the most dramatic and amazing Mens Senior Doubles finals of all time (2014) in Roscommon between Cavan and Meath, Paul Fitzpatrick tried to make sense of it all. Read Paul's review from last years final.
Pause a moment and think. Think. You’re a journalist again now and not just a handball supporter, and you’re faced with a flicking cursor and a blank page on a laptop. What can you recall, 24 hours after a match like none you’ve ever witnessed before?
The memories bleed into one. Glass and timber and concrete, sweat and pain, gasps, heads in hands and howls of encouragement. In the handball alley, four exhausted men slugging it out under desperate pressure. This isn’t about who will wear the crown for a year; the winners will be kings for a lifteime.
One wrong step, one sloppy connection, one shot misdirected by a couple of millimetres, could demolish the dream, reduce the castle to rubble.
The clock on the wall strikes 8.45pm. Two hours and 26 minutes have passed since ref Kevin Geraghty gave the instruction to play ball. Geraghty clears his throat again. “Nineteen serving to 20. Quiet please.”
Has there ever been a better All-Ireland handball final, at any level? Not on this beat there hasn’t, in any case. This was the battle for the record, the elusive tenth Celtic Cross. There was bad blood, too, and points that needed proving. Could Sheridan, at 46, do the unthinkable? Was Finnegan, who brought war for a dozen years on the right side of the court, the force of nature of old? In a shoot-out, who would go lower, and more often, Brady or Carroll?
There were so many angles, so many symmetries coming together, that it’s hard to know where to begin. Maybe the start is the best place after all. That was in 2000, when Brady and Finnegan qualified for their first final, also against Meath, also against Tom Sheridan. The Kells man partnered Walter O’Connor and they were in their pomp, powerful, aggressive, rabble-rousers and great players.
The Cavanmen pushed them to a third game that night but Meath had too much experience and craft and came through a dramatic match, the rickety gallery at Croke Park groaning under the weight of a full house.
There was bad feeling on both sides after that one but, from there, the paths diverged. The Royals won another before Cavan avenged the defeat in 2003, adding a world title for good measure.
Then, Brady’s singles career went into overdrive, at home and abroad, and Finnegan rode shotgun as the pair smashed and grabbed every honour in the game, from Los Angeles to Connemara, Limerick to Longord, and back.
Sheridan – already 35 by the time of those 2003 Worlds – looked spent as a small court superpower, but the emergence of a new partner in the energetic and resilient Carroll re-invigorated him.
Meath clawed their way back to a senior final in 2011 but, even with Brady nursing a shattered finger, Cavan were too strong in their home court of Kingscourt. Then came the great robbery in Cappagh. Finnegan and Brady were caught cold by Sheridan and Carroll’s fire, but, down 20-13 in game three, the Gunner’s heart pumped ice as he closed the show.
Surely, went the logic, that was the end of Tom. He maybe thought so, too, announcing his retirement after another senior triumph in the big court in September 2012.
The sport of the chase, though, is hard to resist. Back came Sheridan this year, after a season away from the 40×20 Senior Doubles championship, you sensed, for one more small court title to seal the record. Why else would he keep on keeping on?
The championship was better for his involvement, for certain. The Kells man is box office. The Robbie Keane-style two-gun salutes to the crowd, the asides to the ref – yesterday, he demanded a line judge be changed at one point after questioning a call from ref Kevin Geraghty – and the throw-back flat underhand rollouts bring a unique drama.
He is a player from another era. To put it in perspective, Finnegan is 38 now and has enjoyed a long and successful career. In 1986, he won an U12 All-Ireland title. The following year, Sheridan won his first Senior Doubles. Think about that for a minute…
If Tom is from a different era, then Brady is from a different world. There has never been a player like the Cavanman – so tough, so smart, so good – but some felt there were chinks in the armour this year. He took an unprecedented break at the tail end of 2013, returning to win two tournaments in the States but dropping two games along the way.
This was as close as it gets to a mini-crisis for the world’s best handball player. The mood wasn’t helped by an indifferent showing on the previous weekend. The semi-finals were played as a double-header at the same venue, and Cavan laboured while Meath purred like an engine.
Watching on as Cavan ground out a win against Clare’s Diarmaid Nash and Niall Malone, Sheridan, ever the extrovert, made his feelings known in an aside to the crowd as he stepped out to the dressing-room to get togged out for his own match.
“I can’t watch any more of this,” he grinned, rising from his seat, to much laughter. Later, he would play well against Brendan Fleming and Killian Carroll, who was born long after Sheridan’s run began in 1987. Then, the waiting game started, a long week as the handball world built up for the latest instalment.
Who would win it? Many couldn’t split them. Meath, in form and in control and without any burden of expectation, would take some beating. But in the blue corner were Cavan, favourites given their record but with some doubts lingering.
Those doubts were doubled early on when Meath came out shooting. Cavan had looked gun shy against Clare and the Royals tried to blow them away early here.
Sheridan crotched his first serve, Carroll ended the second rally with a backwall kill and Sheridan crotched the third serve and then added another kill for four. Another crack serve, a Cavan error and two flat rollouts from Carroll made it eight.
Cavan were in deep water and struggling to stay afloat. They grabbed a lifeline, grappling back to 8-4 with tremendous serves from Brady, but Meath moved to 11, with Carroll flinging himself around the court like a gymnast and reeling off an uncanny succession of sensational kills with both hands.
The pace was frenetic, and Finnegan was struggling. So, too, was Brady. At one point, he went for a kill in the right corner and clipped the strap of Carroll’s eye-guard with the slightest of touches. The goggles went flying, the ball rolled out anyway, but the point had to be replayed.
Cavan came back to level at 18, improbably, but their ship had sprung a leak and Brady couldn’t bail the water out fast enough. Meath took the first.
Game two was a mirror image of the opener. Finnegan found a good serve, a deep drive, breaking off the left sidewall, and Carroll, for the first time, began sending out distress signals. Cavan noticed the flares and were shooting now, with Finnegan painstakingly playing his way into the match. Slowly, they built up a 13-5 lead, as Carroll’s radar began to malfunction on some kill attempts.
For point 18, Finnegan, rising to the challenge, flattened a shot from 25 feet and, for the first time, looked like himself. We glanced at the clock as the Blues closed it out 21-11 – long way to go yet, someone said. Long way to go
The great American player, John Bike, once gave the following tip: “When you’re hot, shoot. When you’re not hot, keep shooting till you get hot.”
It was sage advice from Bike, for doubles especially. It’s a risky game but the best way to score points in a small court, with four fast, athletic players, is to shoot the lights out. A good start was going to be crucial in the third and in doubles, a good start means aggression and confidence.
This was championship handball in its rawest form. It was shoot or be shot, kill or be killed, crush or be crushed, every bit as much of a mental test as a physical one, as it always is at this level.
It’s what separates the top players from the rest. There have been plenty blessed with the world-class hardware, but glitches in the software ruined the process. And only when the pressure comes on do the bugs start to appear. We knew this one was going all the way, and we knew it was unlikely any player would crack.
So, game three was to become a shoot-out – nothing surer. The question was, who wanted it most and had the courage to reach out and grab it? *****
Meath came hurtling out like a steam train. Sheridan killed the first, and the second, Carroll the third and the fifth. In between, Brady skipped one. An ace serve made it 6-0, but Cavan got back to work. First, Finnegan rekilled a Carroll attempt, and the Kells man went on to miss two more.
Carroll made amends with a startling retrieval but an astounding dead roller from Brady put paid to it as Cavan tied at six. A left-corner kill from Finnegan, by now on fire, nudged the dial to eight but Sheridan had plenty left in the legs and reeled off two quick kills of his own. Brady’s rubber-limbed retrieving was startling but it needed to be as Meath levelled at nine. Cavan pulled clear again, to 12, and then to 14, with Finnegan finding the bottom board twice.
Meath hung in there, Carroll rolling one off the backwall at 12-16, but a fly kill from Finnegan and an ace from the service box from Brady saw Cavan moved to 19-13. Finnegan, from 35 feet, produced the shot of the match to send Cavan on to game-ball, and he celebrated like the contest was over. It wasn’t.
Sheridan pounced on a wayward serve from Brady to kill in the left corner and a magical run took Meath to 19, both men in green showing guts and guile under heavy shelling from Cavan, Sheridan roaring to the crowd and waving a defiant fist above the parapet when he killed for their penultimate point.
Suddenly, Meath were within touching distance. Cavan were backed up on the ropes but Brady , great champion that he is, hung tough and produced a shot from nowhere to change the momentum. He turned to the crowd, pumped a fist and, uncharacteristically, kissed the crest on his jersey.
So Cavan were to serve, for the match and a place in the history books.
*****
What did Michael Finnegan think as he stood, exhausted, over the final serve of the match? In the raucous aftermath, he was asked the question.
“I thought history was going to repeat itself,” he said, relieved, referring to 2012 and Cappagh and the 20-13 overhaul which went Cavan’s way.
Many in the crowd had been too nervous to watch, too absorbed to look away. Most just grimaced, before the outpouring of joy among the travelling Cavan supporters and the pained groan of the Meath fans. For the record, Finnegan served, Sheridan returned, Brady killed. And that was that.
The numbers swirl around in the mind as I write, having taken 24 hours to decipher the whole thing. Ten titles, four great players, two-and-a-half hours and, in the end, three shots, three steps to handball heaven.
Bravo, Cavan, and commiserations, Meath. Next year can’t come quickly enough.
