Ireland gets its qualification bid for the 2016 European Handball Championships under way this evening with a match against Estonia in Tallin. The team has climbed from 50th to 40th in the European rankings but faces a tough task in a three team group completed by Belgium.
The 14 man squad includes nine players from Irish based teams, two from Germany, one each from Sweden, England and Spain where Kari Andresson lines out for Barcelona.
Brendán Ó’Riain, a basketball player from University College Dublin is included in the squad for the first time having graduated from the imaginative Green Giant’s programme that seeks to find crossover athletes from rugby, GAA and other sports.
“The skills from other sports are very transferrable,” said Irish Olympic Handball General Manager Lúcás O’Ceallacháin. “Sports like Gaelic football, basketball and tennis where the idea of playing a ball into space are important are especially well suited to a transfer to the handball court.”
Handball was a big hit at the London 2012 games and Sport for Business interviewed Trevor Watkins, the man behind the sponsorship of Team GB last month to gain an insight into what they get from their ongoing support.
The Irish national team is supported by Frontline Energy while discussions are believed to be taking place around commercial support for a number of the programmes being run to harness growing interest in the sport in Ireland.
Ireland will face Estonia and Belgium at home in Dublin during the first week of April 2013, before the final game in this phase of qualification away to Belgium in June next year.
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