HALF-TON OF GOLD FOR GLENBEIGH STAR

50TH MUNSTER TITLE FOR EVERGREEN HANDBALLER

WHEN a handballer embarks on the long, gnarled bóthrín to greatness, the first trait they must exercise is patience.

Handball requires agility, power, precision, and vision, and its alleys have a knack for tripping even natural athletes; the rubber ball streaks around the court like a stray bullet in a Wild West shootout, leaving novice players looking as disoriented as a family chasing a bluebottle.

Most tire of the embarrassment and learn to abscond at the sound of squeaking runners and rattling rubber. But more than three decades on from serving his handball apprenticeship, Dominick Lynch can still be found ‘tipping around’ the nation’s alleys.

It was in Glenbeigh, his home court, that Lynch hoovered up his 50th Munster gold medal on Monday night, a commanding performance in the deciding set condemning Tipperary’s David Moloney to silver in the Munster Master ‘A’ Final.

The five-time World Champion wobbled in the second set, relinquishing a lead with the title in sight – but rather than panicking, the instinct that’s helped him to 24 All-Ireland Championships resurfaced.

“I thought I’d push on at 17-16 in the second [set], but I left him back into it. I said I’d slow my serve down for the decider to try and catch him out, and it worked in fairness – it rattled him.”

“I raced to 10-0, and I knew I had him then.”

His boundless ambition first made itself known before his 10th birthday.

Observers told young Lynch he was ‘going places,’ and though his teenage years were but a speck on the horizon, the Glenbeigh boy knew then what he wanted his future to hold.

“My dream was to play in Croke Park, and I realised at a young age that my best chance of doing that would be through handball. I wanted an All-Ireland badly, and by the time I was under-16 I’d done it; John Joe Quirke and myself won the 40x20 All-Ireland Doubles Championship in 1993, so I ticked that box fairly quickly!

“A year later, I won the Under-17 40x20 Singles at the World Championships in Clare, so then I had to set new targets for myself. “At one stage I wanted to get to 10 Munsters and five All-Irelands, then it went up to around 30 Munsters and 10 All-Irelands. Now I have 50 provincial titles, and I’d like to get the 25th All-Ireland soon, all going well!” Whether it’s 40x20 or 60x30, singles or doubles, teams or hard-ball, Lynch likes to have a crack; a combination of fluency in all codes and an insatiable thirst for success fuels the Glenbeigh man, and he’s confident he can join the local footballers in performing gaisce over the coming weeks. “The lads [Glenbeigh/Glencar] can win the football next week, and I’d like to think I can back up my win on Monday with the All-Ireland in March,” he says with the calm confidence you’d expect of a 24-time national champion. “It’d be mighty for a small area to win two All-Irelands in the space of a month – and with the help of God it will happen.”