Riordan’s skill set prevails
Eleven titles decided over a busy programme of finals
THE COUNTY four-wall handball league finals were held recently in St. Joseph’s Community Centre, with some fine contests bringing proceedings to an end.
Galen Riordan (Ballyhogue) may have taken a little while to assert his superiority in the Division 1 final against Josh Kavanagh (St. Joseph’s), and indeed in this competition generally.
However, when defeat did become a possibility against his youthful opponent, he responded in a manner that left nobody in any doubt as to his right to be considered the Wexford number one four-wall player.
Kavanagh dominated all of the early exchanges, mainly behind an aggressive serve that troubled Riordan from time to time.
It helped the 17-year-old into a position of dominance in that first game, as he controlled centre court and killed brilliantly to run up a 14-8 lead.
Unfortunately for him though, Riordan was not prepared to give up on this first game and, despite facing game ball on six occasions, the reigning county champion clawed his way back to level at 14-14.
It was then we saw the difference between a ruthless top-class player and a very good youngster making rapid progress up the ladder.
The young pretender had six chances to get the single point needed to bank that opening game, but failed to take any of them.
In contrast, when Riordan got one opportunity at 14, he served an unreturnable ball down the right-hand side to clinch the game and put himself on the road to victory.
And indeed victory it was, because thereafter Riordan took complete charge of this final and against a somewhat demoralised opponent he turned on the style to coast home 15-2 in the second.
Despite the loss, this was for Kavanagh a career-building competition, and to qualify for the final in such company showed he has what it takes to compete at this level.
For Riordan it was in many ways a routine victory, eventually gained on the back of a superior skill set, allied to a mental toughness that only experience brings.
The Division 2 decider between Noel Holohan (Templeudigan) and Barry McWilliams (Horeswood) was expected to be a tight affair as two players with bags of experience faced off, but it turned out to be a rather disappointing encounter as the Templeudigan stalwart came home a decisive 15-8, 15-1 winner.
Expectations of a cracking final were raised right from the off when the first rally consisted of approximately twelve shots, but it proved to be a false dawn as the tie quickly developed into a hit and miss contest.
In that context, Holohan was marginally the more reliable of the two and he built a steady lead before closing out the first game 15-8.
Hopes that McWilliams would make it more of a contest in the second died very quickly as the Horeswood man simply could not get into any kind of rhythm despite his best efforts.
By contrast, Holohan, with the scent of victory now in his nostrils, went looking for winners at every opportunity. His second game winning margin of 15-1 sums up how successful he was in that regard.
Some handballers are capable of wiping the memory clear of all previous negatives and resetting everything into positive territory.
Robert Byrne (Bridgetown) is one such player and when he faced David Redmond (Templeudigan) in the Division 3 decider, it is certain that the earlier league meeting between the two, won very comfortably by Redmond, would have been afforded little if any significance in the lead-up to this final.
That is the only conclusion to be drawn from a well-contested encounter, in which Byrne overturned that earlier result to run out a comprehensive winner on a scoreline of 15-5, 15-11.
The earlier meeting between the two was notable for the clinical killing of Redmond, but Byrne controlled the tempo in the final and also defended better from the back of the court.
Redmond’s serve is usually very precise and often acts as a platform for his attacking play, but we saw precious little of this as Byrne returned well and took his own chances when they came.
Without his kill, Redmond was playing Byrne’s type of game, and the Bridgetown man has few peers when it comes to winning the rally when the ball is on the wall.
Although he was always going to be a contender in this very competitive group, it’s probably fair to say that Micheál O’Neill (Templeudigan) would not have been everybody’s idea of the eventual Division 4 winner.
But nobody remembered to tellhimthat,andeveniftheyhad it’s doubtful it would have had any effect. And so, after coming through a really tough semi-final against Seán Stanners, he raised his game again in the final against Laurence Dunne (Kilmyshall) to take the title on a scoreline of 15-3, 12-15, 15-3.
The youthful Dunne was expected to follow up a very impressive semi-final win over the favourite, Joe Devereux, with another commanding performance here, but he found O’Neill to be far less accommodating.
The experienced Templeudigan player set out his stall right from the off, and his mix of strong play and roof shots prevented Dunne from settling into his game.
O’Neill raced away with the opener on a scoreline of 15-3, but Dunne competed better in the second to level the tie with a 15-12 win.
Many would have expected the younger man to dominate the tiebreak, but O’Neill was having none of it as he took charge once again. Once he built an early lead the outcome was never in doubt, and he coasted home to an impressive 15-3 victory against a somewhat demoralised opponent.
The first game in the Division 5 final between James Nolan (Kilmyshall) and Dean O’Neill (Ballymitty) proved pivotal to the eventual outcome here, and when it went the way of Nolan by the minimum margin of 15-14, it set him up for a deserved victory.
Winning that well-contested opening game saw Nolan enter the second with renewed confidence and, try as he might, the young Ballymitty challenger could not dent it enough to get a foothold in this final.
Youth will ensure he will have another day, but on this occasion the title went to the right player as Nolan ran out a 15-8 winner.
It may not have been the best handball we saw all day, but for sheer commitment and excitement it had no peers, as Shane Terry (St. Joseph’s) and Damien Kelly (Coolgreany) opened the eleven-match programme with a cracker of a Division 6 final.
In the longest match of the day, it was Terry who eventually prevailed on a scoreline of 14-15, 15-13, 15-11.
As the scoreline suggests, this was match that ebbed and flowed throughout, but despite that, the only time Kelly looked like losing it was right at the finish of the third game, when against all the odds Terry came from behind to snatch the victory.
Kelly appeared to have struck a vital blow when he won the first game 15-14, but then he let the second slip from a promising position to leave the match all square.
With both now visibly tiring, the pendulum swung in Kelly’s favour as he led close to home, but Terry came with a rattling finish to get over the line for a victory that nobody would deny him.
Although he did not finish on top of the group in Division 7, Conor Murphy (Taghmon) always looked the more likely to win out in this company, and so it proved to be when he took on table-topper, Paul Murphy (Kilmyshall) in the final.
This came down to the youthful handballing skills of Conor Murphy versus the craft and cunning of Paul Murphy, and while the latter did push hard for victory in the first, it was the speed and versatility of the Taghmon player that helped him to prevail by 15-11.
With that game safely banked, he found the second a little easier as he came home a comfortable 15-8 winner.
The well-worn saying that ‘a good start is half the battle’ certainly did not apply when Tommy Moore (Castlebridge) and Shay Byrne (Kilmyshall) clashed in the Division 8 final, as the Castlebridge man had to come from behind to win 2-15, 15-12, 15-11 in a brilliantly hard-fought encounter.
This was a great battle between two players who also needed a tiebreak to separate them when they met earlier in the league stages.
Back then it was Byrne who came out on top, and for a long time in this final it looked like he would repeat that win, only for Moore to finish very strongly and turn the tables when it mattered most.
He was one of only two players to go through the entire league programme without having to face a tie-break, so when he took on Barry Creane (St. Mary’s) in the Division 9 final, Tomás O’Shea (Davidstown) entered the court as a strong favourite to extend that run to ten matches.
He duly kept his focus to justify that favouritism with a 15-6, 15-3 victory, thus ensuring a happier ending to a week that had begun with the passing of his father, Tom.
Creane had proved himself worthy of his place in the final, but he again found the determined O’Shea difficult to keep at bay throughout the first game. He found winners difficult to come by, and all the while O’Shea tagged on scores to put himself in a winning position.
The Davidstown club Chairperson kept up the pressure in the second to run out a convincing winner, and so end the week holding both the winner and leading qualifier medals.
The second player to go through the full programme of matches without being taken to a tie-break was Liam Murphy (Castlebridge), and he duly maintained that sequence in the Division 10 final against James Greene (Davidstown), when he coasted to a convincing 15-5, 15-4 victory.
Greene tried hard throughout this contest but was always playing second fiddle against a superior opponent.
Murphy also had the distinction of conceding the lowest average points (4.25) per game in the league, and when his semi-final and final are taken into account, this dropped to 4.0 per game. Truly a dominant force in this division.
At 15 years of age, she was the youngest entrant in the competition, but when she qualified for the Division 11 semi-final stages, having already tasted defeat in one of her league games, Ellie Murphy-O’Gorman (St. Joseph’s) showed the maturity of a veteran to go on and take the title with an impressive 15-9, 15-4 win over Leanne Boland (Coolgreany).
Leanne had just managed to make the knockout stages in fourth place, but then produced her best performance of the competition to knock out her hitherto unbeaten clubmate, Lucia Merrigan, in the semi-final.