Come Here To Me!

Handball Alley, Mount Pleasant Buildings, Dublin. (date unknown)

The story of Dublin handball is interesting. Through the years the country has always been a recognised stronghold of the game, which at times has flourished, dwindled, though not to the point of extinction and, in turn, regained prominence.

So proclaimed the Irish Press in 1966, at a time when handball was already in sharp decline in the capital. Of the GAA sports, handball is the least familiar to the general public today, and yet in the urban landscape of Dublin you can still find handball alleys or the remnants of them, in both city and suburbia. For decades, the game was second only to soccer as a street game in Dublin. In 2014, the photographer Kenneth O’Halloran photographed dozens of old handball alleys across Ireland, estimating there to be close to a thousand dotting the landscape.

The rules for the modern game of handball in Ireland were written by the Gaelic Athletic Association, who included the game within the GAA’s charter of 1884, though the Comhairle Liathróid Láimhe na hÉireann ( the Irish Handball Council) was not established until 1924. The game enjoyed some popularity among the revolutionary generation, with Frank Thornton recalling of his time in prison during the War of Independence that “Inter-wing rivalry was encouraged, and it wasn’t long until the Handball Championship of the prison was being fought out against the gable end wall of one of the wing.” The pivotal figure in the early development of the game in Ireland was John Lawlor, a brilliant player of the game in both Ireland and the United States, who was also a committed trade unionist and nationalist. His graveside oration in 1929 was given by none other than Jim Larkin, and handball historian J.K Clarke has detailed the manner in which Lawlor fought tooth and nail to promote the game.

A contributing factor in the popularity of the game was the inclusion of handball courts in large places of work, with factories and depots looking to handball as a means of providing physical exercise for staff on breaks. Workers at the Great Southern Railway in Inchicore had their own handball alley, and they would also become common place in fire stations and police stations. Early Garda Commissioner Eoin O’Duffy was a great supporter of the game and Gaelic games more broadly. Some of the most capable handball players in Dublin emerged from the force, including Paddy Perry, who took the Irish senior softball title every year between 1930 and 1937, and Tom Soye. Yet such alleys generally give us insight into the game’s popularity among working adults; it was handballs incredible popularity as a street game among urban youth that made it so important in a Dublin context. Paul Fitzpatrick, who has written a number of insightful articles on various aspects of the game, pinpoints the early decades of independence as the glory age for the sport, noting that “Handball shone briefly, brightly and brilliantly in the 1920s through to the ‘50s and just as quickly faded away.” This was a time of rapid suburbanisation in Dublin, and the game proved popular in ever-expanding Dublin.

The popularity of the game, much like soccer, came from its simplicity in terms of requirement to participate. Soccer is sometimes described as the most egalitarian of games, requiring only four jumpers and a ball for youths to enjoy themselves, handball required merely a wall and ball. The dominance of the game is remembered in oral histories of Dublin, including the masterclass Dublin Tenement Life: An Oral History of the Dublin Slums. Billy Dunleavy, who grew up in Dublin’s notorious Monto district, told the interviewer that “Kids would be knocking about the streets. We used to play handball against a big wall….and if you mitched from school you’d get a hiding.”

One of the most important handball alleys in Dublin was constructed in Ballymun at The Boot Inn in 1909, remaining in use for decades afterwards, and witnessing a challenge in 1924 between Irish professional champion, J.J Kelly of Dublin, and visiting world champion J.J Heaney of New York. While The Boot is gone, the website irishhandballalley.ie does contain an interesting visual archive of remaining handball alleys in Dublin, including in Blackrock College, Casement Aerodrome and Pigeon House Fort, Ringsend.

Why did the game go into such sharp decline in the 1960s? Rian Dundon, who compiled a beautiful photographic piece on the game in the United States for timeline.com pinpoints a later date for its decline there, noting that “Handball’s ubiquity began to decline in the 1980s as basketball, another urban sport with a low bar for entry, rose to dominance in parks and schoolyards.” By then, the game had sadly all but faded from the sports pages in Ireland.

Despite its declining popularity in recent decades, the game still has its disciples in Dublin. Numerous GAA clubs actively promote the game, and it is included in the ‘Experience Gaelic Games’ programme offered by Na Fianna in Dublin, where the game is still played competitively too. To those who participate in it, it remains an important sport, and perhaps the old handball alleys dotted across this island should encourage the rest of us to investigate the sport more. As sports historian Paul Rouse recently wrote in the Irish Examiner:

They thrived as sites of popular recreation, places where people could gather and play or watch. Or just sit. The image of the ball alley with dozens of bikes scattered around its perimeter waiting to be reclaimed by their owners is one of the great iconic images of mid-20th century Ireland.