Gaelic Games

Ireland conquered, the Wallball world awaits for Conor McElduff

Undisputed Irish champion aiming to prove his mettle again at the first World Wallball Championships in Limerick

Conor McElduff: 'I’ve still never called myself the number one in the world. I want to set that right next week,' Photograph: Bryan Keane/Inpho
Paul Fitzpatrick
Fri Aug 16 2024 - 06:00

On his gloves and shirt, Conor McElduff carries a three-letter motif – ‘TGO’. It stands for ‘The Great One’, a moniker that his friends gave him when he first started winning elite handball tournaments and which, you suspect, he didn’t exactly shy away from.

McElduff (30) is the best One Wall handball player in Ireland, one of the best in Europe and, by the culmination of the World Championships in Limerick next week, he hopes, officially, to be the best there is – anywhere.

Handball is enjoying a moment and the One Wall (rebranded as Wallball) version of it – a ball, a wall and off you go – is the largest growth area, so much so that it has now been given a stage all of its own.

The oneills.com World Handball Championships, a triennial event rotating between Ireland, the USA and Canada, were inaugurated in 1964 and focused heavily on the 4-Wall code, in which Cavan’s Paul Brady won five titles.

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But such has been the development of the Wallball version of the game that when it came to organising a first Worlds since 2018 (the 2021 event was cancelled due to the pandemic), it was decided to run two separate events for the first time.

The first World Wallball Championships serve off this Sunday (August 18th) at the University of Limerick in a custom-built 10-court arena. The tournament has attracted almost 900 entries from Ireland, England, Wales, the USA, Canada, Japan and the Basque Country among other nations. Heading the field is McElduff.

A Gaelic footballer as a child, he discovered handball at the age of 14 and has been hooked since.

“It’s like a mixture of chess and boxing,” he says.

As a kid, he attended the Irish Nationals at Breaffy House hotel in Mayo and it lit a spark.

“It was the biggest tournament of the year, we even had international players fly over to compete. I had just been playing handball for a couple of years at that stage and I just remember always wanting to get good enough to play in the Men’s Open grade.

“It was a dream to maybe some day reach a final as I loved how the final was the main event, all other courts closed down and all the audience focused in on the main court to spectate. I would always picture getting to that stage and luckily enough it all came to fruition.”

After winning the 19&U grade in the national championships, he won the Open at his first attempt a year later, in 2014. Since then, he has been beaten just once on Irish soil.

He began to travel to compete internationally. He’s played in the depths of winter in Friesland at the northern tip of the Netherlands, in the baking autumn heat in Valencia, where he once played 14 games over two days, winning the Spanish Open Singles and Doubles, and soothed his muscles by leaping into the Balearic Sea.

In 2018, a breakthrough arrived when he won the World Championships in Minneapolis but the top players from New York – Wallball’s Mecca, with 2,000 courts and professional players – weren’t there. He was the world champion but it felt a little hollow.

Most of the New Yorkers are street players, aggressive hustlers who play money tournaments and for large side-bets. The consensus in the handball community was they could not be beaten. This week, McElduff aims to prove that wrong.

“It was still all New York players I beat to win the Worlds in 2018 which was still an achievement in itself that no Irishman had ever came close to before but, unfortunately, a few of the top players withdrew a few days before that event started.

“So as proud as I am of winning that world title and becoming the first ever Irishman to do so, I’ve still never called myself the number one in the world. I want to set that right next week, test myself and just prove to everyone that these New York players are all beatable.”

To win it, McElduff will have to negotiate a stacked field. Among the big guns on his side of the draw are Luke Thomson, an English lefty who works in recruitment for Chelsea FC and has beaten McElduff before, and New Yorker Nazir ‘Nasty Naz’ Marston.

In the Ladies Open, Catriona Casey of Cork heads the field and will face American Nancy Dong in the first round. There are overage grades up to Over-60s and juveniles, right down to an 11&U fun doubles grade.

The elite matches will be streamed live on the Sport TG4 YouTube channel and McElduff, known for his charisma on court, is relishing the showcase.

“Lots of players are fast or ‘get artists’, others are very hard hitters but I seem to be a mixture of everything, I like to outthink my opponent and play to his weaknesses while playing to my strengths. I have all the fundamentals down to a T and keep it simple with the odd injection of flair.

“It was always just a goal of mine to win and be as dominant as I possibly could and here we are 11 or 12 years after my first Irish title, I’ve only lost once here, which was in a tiebreaker of the final in the Irish nationals and, still to this day, it haunts me.

“My mindset is always the same for either the biggest matches or the opening rounds. I just have it in my mind that this is my code, I’ve put in the work and as long as I perform, play as hard as I can, I’ll be there or thereabouts.

“It’s a big part of my ego too, I’ve been the best One Waller in Ireland since I was 19 or 20 and I just put that onus on myself to remain so.”

Ireland conquered, the world awaits.