Meeting House Square in Dublin’s Temple Bar will be taken over this evening by company teams experiencing Handball for the first time.  This is the Olympic as opposed to the Gaelic variety and its appeal has mushroomed since being voted the most popular sport by spectators at London 2012.
The sport itself is huge on continental Europe, second only to soccer in terms of popularity and the number one women’s participation sport throughout the Nordic countries, Germany and eastern Europe.
The sport is normally played on a court slightly bigger than is needed for basketball by a team at any one time of five players.  It is fast, high scoring with a goal a minute on average and harbours ambitions here to become the next breakthrough sport.
There is a national team, managed by Tony Girona of Barcelona and the High Performance Director is former US and Ireland national Rugby manager Eddie O’Sullivan.  Ireland train and play at Phibblestown in West Dublin and recently hosted a tournament featuring the best teams from England, Ireland and Barcelona.  Next year Ireland will host qualifying games for the European Championships.
A women’s national team is also becoming more established, in the wake of renewed interest since the Olympics.
The Street Handball Companies Cup was devised as a means of bringing the sport to a wider audience.  There will be 24 teams, all new to the sport and a sprinkling of international players and sporting celebrities taking part as guests on teams as well.
Tonight’s action is sponsored by Frontline Energy, supported by the Temple Bar Community trust and is helping to raise funds and awareness for the World Sports Team, established this year in Dublin to help those who suffer any form of catastrophic injury through sport.  The action gets under way from 4pm and runs through to around 8pm.
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