The Irish Handball Discussion Site

-10 vs Faroer
-16 vs Georgia
-10 vs England (+5 first half -5 end of the match total -10)
Amazing, a great success!!!
The future is blind... sorry bright ;-)

Don't forget to highlight our teammate Steffan too!

Thanks to all who came down to Limerick this weekend, a great weekend for Irish handball and anyone who saw the games knows how big the potential for this team and Handball in Ireland is, we'll be bigger and better for the Internationals in the next few months and the next few years. A team with an average age just under 20 years old has a lot of time to develop and we'll show it!

Anonymous, you should expand your comment. It is a bit short and doesn't really say much. The delta with Georgia and FarOer were expected. A bit surprising is the result with England as this was the very first Challenge Trophy for England, and I guess nobody really knew what to expect from them. Then, I do not think that reading -10 from England is right. But surely I would be curious to understand what happened there. I haven't seen the match, so it is up to the coaching staff and whoever was there to read what happened in those 30 min. Nice would be a comment here.

What happened against England was what I think a mixture of inexperience and a lack of legs/manpower compared to the english at the end, we lost 3 of our 5 players with challenge trophy experience for the game and we simply couldn't maintain our better handball for 60 minutes, thats tournament handball though, people get injured. Not Englands first CT, bronze in 2007.
Amazing! that despite you're pleas for more clarity Andrea that there are still cowards posting...

ooops, Chris, you are totally right. For some reason in my head I have associated England with GB. As for the anonymous. I can of course disable the option, but actually at present it shows that there are sentiments (not necessarely good) and interest toward the Irish team, but a lack if information. So if not else we can fill the information gap. Then may be sentiments change....well we know who is the not liked person there.

This is the third English CT, they played 2005 and 2007 in both occasion they won against Ireland.
Chris I do not agree with you at all, about being bigger and better on International level, and I tell you why. The answer is simple, there is no leauge in Ireland, so while you and other few, play in Germany the other 80% of the team is in Ireland with no training, no facilities, and no strong competition, so how can this people grow???
And more, you are talking of lack of legs against Eng, am I wrong or you all passed a physical test just couple of weeks ago??? So was this physical preparation wrong, considering an high amount of injuries, and a failure of physical strenght, in the most important match of the tournament???
Finally do you (but more than you, your coaches) realise that since 2006 (when this staff took charge) you have played more than 30 International games, and you have won only 4 or 5 of them?? By the way pretty much all against Scotland, and one against a kind of DI in the 3 nations, couple of years ago against a team with 2 players in the court.After 5 years you are still not superior to teams as Malta, England, Scotland, do not even mention Faroer, Armenia, Luxemburg etc.
So this is what I think, I do not want to offend anyone (and if I did I apologies),unfortunately I am not diplomatic, and who knows me knows that I tell what I think. I may be wrong, but after 30 years in this sport I think to know what I am talking about.
Enjoy your time in Germany and learn as much as you can from this period there.

By the way, the "European Sport Capital of 2011" is Valencia not Limerick.

http://www.aces-europa.eu/Home/EuropeanCapitals/tabid/56/Default.aspx

who said it was Limerick? Could not see it.

Gianni has a point when he says that a harder home league would push improvement. A few training camps are not enough. I would also add that the committment of the players is of high level, and seems that the limiting factor is how the coaching staff works. The head coach is not present and aware enough. the home coach can't see beyond his club. In my little opinion I think it is time to get you a full time impartial fully dedicted coach. I mean that you are now in the space where details are important. I do not comment about physical preparation as I do not know details. Question: if Challenge Trophy is U23 only what is left for the older players? what is the plan/strategy there?

Andrea, first I am not commenting about physical preparation, I am just asking, I was not ther either, but is many players got injuried in a very short period of time and the team in the most important match lost its legs (Chris words not mine) maybe there is something wrong.
About the coach staff, if after 5/6 years of work with results that are under everyone eyes, the boss (IOHA) is still happy with this staff and is willing to keep going this way, well.....
I am definitely happy with this squad (U23) don't take me wrong,and I think this should be the team of the future, but 11 out of 16 are in Ireland and none of them have proper training in a weekly basis and I am talking about pure handball. I haven't any strategy or plan,I am not thinking about it it's not my place I am not the coach or the GM, I am just a guy with a lot of passion and experience in this game. Nobody has asked me any advice, so obviously they do not need it, and be honest I am not sure if I will be happy to give it any.

From IOHA website:

Congratulations to the Faroe Islands on a great victory in Ireland at the IHF/EHF Challenge Trophy! An amazing weekend of handball in Limerick in the European City of Sport 2011. Full reports to follow but here are the best bits in these great videoes by EventJunkies.ie

At moment the European Ranknig looks like this:

41 Andorra
42 Albania
43 Armenia
44 England
45 Faroe
46 Ireland
47 Liechenstein
48 Monaco
49 Malta
50 Scotland

All these teams are on ZERO points so this is only the alphabetical list, considering the results in the last year maybe two, this list should be really be like this:

41 Albania
42 Armenia
43 Faroe
44 England
45 Malta
46 Scotland
47 Ireland
48 Andorra
49 Liechenstein
50 Monaco

If as Chris says you wanna show who you are then you should cleary be superior to SCO, MLT and ENG (not beat them by 1 in a friendly) beating them by 5/6/7 in official competitions continuosly (several times) so that you can clearly claim the 44th spot with no doubt, then you can consider it a success.
Does anyone agree ???

Gianni, you are a though client. I think the plan is to be competitive among the small nations, and this is understandable. So let's leave England out for now, with its 50/60 millions people. Ireland will need to be able to compete and win vs Malta, Andorra, Leichestein, Scotland, FarOer,... The main advantage for many of these countries is the weekly exposure to higher lavel of handball, which brings back to the Irish league. Also let's not forget which position handball is in the popularity chart of those coutries, hence the number of active players and coaches skills. And there is a lot of work to do in these two areas. As for the coaching staff. let's take a step out of feeling. The analysis of the last 6 years performances should not be done by the coaching staff itself, the coaching staff is a key part of the team, and should be put in the pot together with everything else.

Limerick is the European Capital of Sport for 2011.

Click below if you don't believe

http://www.limerick.ie/europeancityofsport/

I agree with some of what both of you say.

We (minus me and 3 other starting team players) beat Scotland by 21 and 13 goals last month, that team beat Malta on Sunday and I believe that we would also be on a similar level Moldova and Azerbaijan (Based on last weekends results, though not always reliable) (Armenia I have no idea)
England and Faroer are also within range right now, which brings me to the other comment, by lack of legs against I refer to the lack of experienced/go to players left, the injuries that caused this happened on the court/not fitness related (these things happen in tournament handball), physical fitness has been the best I've known it for my 4 years and will improve measurably in the next few months again and in years to come as we now have the proper structure in place.

Beating these teams on a consistent basis is what we aim to do over the next few years, me and everyone else associated with the team will be striving to do so and to bring ourselves onto the next level.

I have every confidence that this will be achieved and more in the next 10-12 years this core group has together (plus hopefully better Handballers that will overtake us in the squad in that time) and my confidence is really all that matters because I'll be the one on the court, not 'anonymous' I'm the one who has gone to Germany to help make this happen and there may be others following suit.

As both Gianni and Andrea correctly point out, the league is a huge limiting factor on the potential, but it’s also something that haters and supporters alike can actively try to make better, Andrea and Ciaran are fighting to make the leagues better on their own and need more support from everybody!

This is a long term thing that has only just begun and already we are getting much better results than ANY Irish National Handball team has got, that may not say much and me speculating about what level we may achieve is really useless, I think I'll just let our handball do the talking for the next few years.

hi,

I split my comment in two parts because it won’t fit the length required otherwise.

Part 1

we saw the matches against the faroe islands and against georgia.

the first one was a reasonably good match from the irish team. the second was not.

what i found most interesting to see was the lack of teamwork within the irish team - and by this i don't mean that there is a lack of willingness on the side of the players. one can see that everyone is eager to connect with their team-mates, but there is no smoothness in the way how combinations in attack are played and in defence it looks as if the six on the court do not have a clear picture of the way they are to work as a unit, things like: "what is my job as a half left if our right wing defender is passed out by an attacker". one may call this basic awareness, or conceptual thought or whatever else. the bottom line is that it is obvious that in this area there is a huge gap to teams like georgia or the faroe islands.

then, the individual skills levels of the irish team on one side and the faroes and georgia on the other are miles apart. the only irish player who could compete in this area (and actually quite comfortably) is steffan. against the faroe islands it was he who kept the team in the game for most of the first half and thus allowed for this nice spell at the beginning of the second half in which the team came as close as two goals.

over the two matches, what i found most striking to see was that there was no such thing as a team-order. by that i mean, the first six put out on the court did not impress at all, changes were made in a manner that had the character of 'quick fix', but these did not work either.

team-work on the court is more than shouting "ireland" ...

to be continued

Part 2


so my overall impression from the two matches, while i liked the spirit and the eagerness displayed in the first match, the deficits were all too obvious: lack individual skills, lack of coherence, lack of concept, over-reliance on one player who had a brilliant day against the faroes, but not the best day against georgia. in this context also: the game of the irish team is far too easy to read. again, the only spark came from steffan. why is that, i don't know? is there too much emphasize on standard situations (your 'short', 'long' or 'line switch')? in truth, no defender of a 5th division team in germany would pay great attention if you play 'long', it is completely predictable when, where and by whom the penetration of defence will be attempted, so: simply focus on this spot and this player. no problem.
no sudden changes of direction, no inclusion of wings, no goal threat by most of the players involved.

to those who read this as contradictory to the above claim of lack of team-work – it is not at all contradictory. the basic moves are not exercised with enough drive and speed, one can see that the players are not all comfortable with what they are doing. it looks as if they lack believe in it which can only happen if they are uncertain of each other in the actual situation, if they have to ‘consciously think’ the situation is ‘gone’ – this comes down to a lack of repetitions of the basics which (paradoxically) leads to a lack of initiative in the actual game situation and over-reliance on the ‘standard.’

the whole thing looked awfully laboured. a matter of pressure being put on you? pressure to perform, to be better than you actually can be - and in consequence you don't even reach your individual standards? i can't judge this, these are only assumptions. i am too far removed from all that is happening around and with that group. what i see is the result of a months-long preparation process, not more. this result was not really impressive.

to be fair here, one needs to take out steffan from this criticism – he is constantly looking for opportunities in attack and he is not at all predictable. it was a pleasure to see such a player in the team. the real task would be to bring the other players closer to his standard.

my overall impression from the two matches was that it all is really a lot of patchwork. teamwork is more than shouting “ireland” in unison. i don’t know how the match against england went, could not stay for it.

what i found also was that on friday and saturday it did not look as if it was fun for the team to be out there.


bye

robert

Chris, I think you are right, this is possibly the best Irish team so far, and there are a few players that were left out and that can certainly push up the level. Robert, nice comment. I can see your points. I have noticed similar things when I saw them before. Two years ago in Malta and last year in Gormanston. 1-players were not playing in their usual role, hence not confortable. 2-defence seemed to be improvised 3-the thing that probably annoyed me the most was the heavy use of set pieces. But these were obviously tried over and over in training, possibly playing vs a few cones on the floor, hence the total lack of interaction with the defence. As I said in a previous post, player material is possibly there. It is the making them work together the missing part

Chris, you may have beaten Scotland last month, but on senior level, the have beaten you last March in the 3 Nation in Gormanstown, and unfortunately A beat B and B beat C so A is better than C it doesn't work.
I agree that you are probably better than Scotland, but Malta and England are better than you at moment. Faroe Island is another story, I am afraid that you are totally wrong saying that Faroe are in your range. Maybe in 10 years of very very very hard work you would probably loose by 5 or 6 instead of 20 or more, but they are NOT in your range at all.

Robert
I haven't seen any of this tournament matches but what you say about connection and smoothness sound so familiar.
In fairness it is not job for the National Coach to teach these guys how to play,or how to be smart and smooth, that comes with the experience of playing matches after matches, expecially the league (thet we don't have)
The National Team is just an extention of what happen in the National league, and in this case we are in the total darkness. Obviously if the league doesn't produce anything good, the "germans" are on a different level, plus (as Andrea said) you put people in the wrong position, then we have disaster,as we saw this in the 3 Nations.
With all the criticism that I can have for the Coaching Trio, I have to say that the main problem in this country is the League, non good league non good results, unless all these players will go to germany which is not going to happen.
So as we say No Martini No Party!!
We all know, but are we sure that who is in charge of all this knows it too???

Oh before I forget
for the anonimous that claim that Limerick is whatever City of 2011.
The link that you posted is the link of Limerick City, the link that the oter guy posted is the link of the Aces Europe which is the European body that make this awards, sorry man, but I rather believe Aces Europe than Limerick City.
Is like Shamrock Rovers says that they won the Champions League and UEFA says that the winner is Barcelona, who will you believe???

let's start with a light clarification. Limerick IS A EUROPEAN CITY OF SPORT AND VALENCIA IS THE EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF SPORT. and both are on the ACES website http://www.aces-europa.eu/Home/EuropeanCapitals/tabid/56/Default.aspx scroll down...
I think Gianni point about Far Oer need a clarification. Chris compares the two national teams and sees a bridgable gap. Gianni doesn't. I think that we need to expand the analysis. Far oer NAtional squad is bult on a piramid with a wide base (will explain later). Ireland national Team is build on a column with no base. Chris mentioned that we had some injury, and that Steffan was outstanding. Here the issue, we do not have replacement, as soon as we step out, we fall off as from a column. the Far Oer piramid is not only that they have more top level players than we do. the piramid include everythink: at which position the sport is ranked internally vs other sport, how many people play handball compare to other sport, how many coaches of quality, how many halls, how many hour of handball, money, advertisement, everything is in teh piramid. when you compare all this to us you realise why I say that the Irish team stands on a column. To broad the base is a tough and long job, and I think here is were we are working now. But it will take time. teh current level of thye Irish national team is way above what the little Irish piramid can sustain. So while you Chris you do your best to sustain it, we work on what can help you..or more likely next generation

Gianni, I did say comparing results isn't reliable, there is no way we can know until we start playing international matches on a regular basis, which is what we aim to do.
We are not putting any pressure on ourselves in terms of results, we will focus on a our development first as we are a very young national team and gaining the experience needed to hopefully one day compete at a better level.

From IOHA website:
22 x Level 1 EHA/IOHA coaches qualified thanks to assistance of Allan Lund and EHF

I want just to remind you that the course was Saturday 5th Nov from 10am to 1pm
How can you qualify somebody as coach with a 3 hours course???????

The one above might be the last anonymous post I'll allow as it is proving difficult for me to manage the posts. It is hard to read and publish without getting involved in discussions I’m not interested. Unfortunately, when I do publish a post from someone else, I feel like I do agree with them simply because I published them. But this is not always the case, and I feel the need to engage in conversations I’m not too interested in just to clear my view.