Joey Maher lifts the world handball crown
DROGHEDA MAN SEES OFF THE CHALLENGE OF NEW YORKER TO CLINCH THE ULTIMATE HONOUR November 1967
JOEY Maher, former Irish handball champion and now a Toronto policeman, won the world handball title by defeating Carl Obert of New York. 21/9 21/9. Canada and the United States tied for the world team championship with four wins each in the singles and doubles. Ireland finished third in the competition.
In December, Joey, who emigrated three years ago, was honoured by the Canadian Government.
This came in the shape of the Canadian Gold Medal of Excellency which was presented to him for his outstanding sporting services. The medal was officially handed over at a banquet in Toronto.
Joey’s success brought home the fact that although there was a proud tradition in handball, the town’s only alley at Millmount was condemned and subsequently closed by the Corporation in 1962. It has lacked even facilities for a practice session.
Down through the years the town has produced some of Ireland’s best known exponents of the artful game. Such names as Paddy Sheridan, John Dwyer, Tom Markey, Christy Clarke and Jack Murray were always to the fore, but it was perhaps in more recent times with the advent of Joey Maher, Fintan Conefry and the Reilly brothers that Drogheda made its biggest impact on the scene at a national level. From 1957 to 1967, sixteen major titles have come to the town.
Joey Maher, now champion of the world, collected nine All-Ireland titles in various grades, Fintan Conefry, now, like Maher, an exile in Canada, won four titles, Paddy Reilly, at present secretary/ treasurer of St. Mary’s Handball club, has two to his credit and his brother Terry also has a title. Be that as it may, handball players in Drogheda must now travel seven miles to Gormanston College for even a practice session, and is a strong contention among the older players in the town, that if facilities are not provided locally in the near future, interest in the sport will die out completely.
St. Mary’s club is not without the means to provide a suitable alley. They have on hand approximately £1,000, and it is felt, that with a little co-operation and financial support locally, they would be able to provide the town with a championship alley.
When the alley at Millmounl was considered unsafe some years back, the club was offered an alternative site at Marian Park by the Corporation. The Corporation went further by offering a grant of £600 towards this building.
Tho club was also promised a grant of £1,500 from the Department of Local Government towards the project, but these grants would not have been available until work had been completed on the erection of the alley. While the club was toying with a suggestion by Joey Maher that they should erect an American alley, the country was hit by the credit squeeze, and the Department had no alternative but to disallow the promised grant.
And so the provision of a suitable alley for Drogheda was left in abeyance. Month by month and year by year the membership of St. Mary’s Handball cluc steadily dropped, until today, secretary Paddy Reilly, himself still a stalwart representative of Co. Louth in the bigger competions, estimates that there is as little as 12 to 15 men from the town playing the game at all.