Ballymote’s Cormac Finn is All-Ireland champ
THIS year’s 40x20 season came to a conclusion over the weekend at the newly-opened Irish Handball Centre in Croke Park and yet again it proved to be the happiest of hunting grounds for Sligo’s most accomplished underage handballer, Cormac Finn from the Ballymote club.
Having secured an historic under 21 doubles title four weeks ago with club-mate Donal Mitchell, expectations were high that the supremely talented Finn would add the singles title to his ever increasing list of achievements in Sunday’s final.
His Co. Kilkenny opponent, Sean Barron, had a reasonably comprehensive victory over Conor McClean from Armagh in his semi-final but faced a much stiffer test here from the 2022 All-Ireland minor singles champion and so it proved. The Sligo man got off to a dream start and racked up ace after ace against his luckless and clearly shell-shocked opponent to lead 16 aces to 1 at one stage and he went on to win the opening games 21 aces to 10. There was to be little relief for Barron in the second game either and in truth this final was somewhat of a mismatch as Finn was simply in a different class and he secured the win for the loss of just six aces in the second game.
It was a pretty disappointing championship for the many Connacht contenders, as Mayo’s Shane Heraty the only other winner, in the men’s over 35 singles event. Castleconnor’s Darragh Murphy, now a Drumcliffe handball club member beat fellow club mate Gearóid Conway in the provincial junior C singles championship last week and he now has a semi-final date this week with Galway’s
Damien McDermott for a place in the final. Sligo handball supporters will have the opportunity to see Cormac in action in the All-Ireland 60x30 Intervarsities championship which is being hosted by the Ballymote and Collooney clubs on Friday and Saturday next. A number of Sligo’s third level student of varying skill level will be taking part including Laura Finn who features in the Ladies open and Laois native, Laura Brophy representing Sligo’s ATU.