Dr Andrea Ongaro is just back from seeing how the other half live. The coaching director of the Irish Olympic Handball Association (IOHA) didn't need the eye opener, the chasm between those competing at the World Championships in Qatar and the amateur organisation he is tasked with moulding over the coming years was known to him beforehand, but it's nice to know exactly where you stand.
As an “emerging nation” Ireland stands a long way off the upper order battling it out in Doha and Qatar’s emerging city of Lusail. Even some of those in Ireland’s bracket seem a long way off in the distance, but if Ongaro has adopted one local mantra, it’s: “We are where we are.”
There are two ways forward: the Qatar way and the hard way.
Hire the best
The Qatar way is pretty straightforward: hire the best coach, recruit some of Europe’s best players, pay them all handsomely and let the good times roll. It’s been working quite well, as it happens, but it’s not an option open to Ongaro and the IOHA.
“Ireland is far from that level, quite far,” says Ongaro while on his lunch break from Intel. “The top athletes will pick rugby, Gaelic, football and some individual sports like rowing . . . obviously we get those who don’t make a high level.
“Plus the sport is still beginning and developing. We have only five or six senior teams and the pool of players is very small.” In fact, the pool of players available to the men’s team is above 80 and below 100 strong. There are around 60 women in the club game.
“We need to be realistic, we want to be competitive with the smaller nations,” adds Ongaro, a Verona native in Leixlip via UCD’s chemistry faculty. That’s harder than it sounds because many of those are ex-Soviet states, whose handball tradition is strong. Even the Faroe Islands are a benchmark given their proximity to one of the sport’s strongholds Denmark.
It’s Iceland who hold the key for Ongaro.
“I keep looking at Iceland. It’s a national sport in Iceland, everyone plays handball in Iceland. They are not millions of people there, it’s a small country but they have good system in place and they manage to be at the top level.”
Both popularity and money are important, but Iceland’s handballing factions learn together, grow together and “share as much as they can,” says Ongaro, and it’s something Ireland can learn from.
“There is a lot of work we can do without money, just work on the ground - get some manpower behind it. You can have all the money you want but without somebody to go and do handball in schools the money will stay in the bank!”
Imports are essential, says Ongaro, but they must buy into the collective.
“Asking a player to come and play for a tournament and then go back home, to be honest, doesn’t give me anything. It gives us 10 goals, so what, we lose by less. What does it give to me as an Irish-based coach? What does it give to my kids? They don’t know who this guy is, they don’t learn anything from him. They are just coming, playing and going home.
Trickle down
“It would raise your basic level of your senior team but we need to find a way for it to trickle down. If it doesn’t happen then it’s pointless to have him, it’s better to play with who you have here.”
Thankfully, the Celtic Tiger’s immigration legacy means there are talented foreign players. “Those are valuable people because they do work in the country, they do stay here all year round, they do play in our league and they do show handball to our kids.”
A European “emerging nations” tournament is pencilled in for 2015, but Ongaro says there are a lot of those and Ireland will have a job just to qualify.
Even the 2020 European Championships, extended now to 24 teams, is a big ask, but it all starts here.
A new men's coach to succeed Slovakian Alex Markovic, who has moved to junior side of the game, will be announced in early February, along with a team manager. No pay, just vouched expenses, but Ongaro and the IOHA are looking for someone who, like them, is not motivated by the bottom line.
“His (Markovic’s) work with the juniors will be very important and I think he is the best person for it. Myself, Alex and the new senior coach will be working closely together.”
It’s all back to Iceland and that collective “identity”.
“We have some good interesting players, I think we need to rebuild a bit of team spirit and make sure that these people click together and start having a bit of pride and passion.
“I don’t think we should look at the scoresheet, it’s not important at the moment . . . because whoever is going to be in the 2020 qualifiers is not in the senior team right now.”
