Part 1: Unleashing the Chris O'Reilly Handball Journey

Photo credit: Chris O'Reilly, Irish Olympic Handball Association

Today, we have the privilege of delving into the extraordinary handball journey of Chris O'Reilly, an Irish player who has carved his name and contribution for the Irish Handball and internationally as a commentator of the European Handball Federation. In this exclusive interview that will be separated in 2 parts, we explore the initial steps into handball and the countless challenges he has overcome to emerge.

Chris O'Reilly is one of the Irish trio of the (Un)informed Handball Hour, along with Brian Campion and Alex Kulesh, who have created the first European Handball Federation partner podcast. At just 33 years old, Chris has already established a remarkable career in the handball world. He began playing this sport at the North Kildare Handball Club, thanks to the guidance of Ukrainian coach Olena Karpenko. From there, he progressed to the national league and than joined the Irish National team, which provided him with the opportunity to play at a higher level abroad for the first time with the German team PHC Wittenberg in 2011.

Starting at the age of 11, Chris's life has revolved around handball, and at 17 years old, he made his debut for the Irish national team. Since then, he has been actively involved in this sport, both on the field and behind the scenes. In 2012, he temporarily stepped away from playing due to an injury, which led him to pursue a different path. He secured a full-time position with the European Handball Federation (EHF) for a duration of 5 years and for the past 6 years, he has been working as a freelancer, which prompted him to relocate to Sweden. Currently, his professional life is centered around handball and culture, striking a balance he describes as "50-50". He is commentating on major matches and conducts interviews with the most prominent stars in the international handball community, all while enjoying his role as an art director.

Until the age of 15, like every Irish teenager, Chris tried various sports, including football, Gaelic football and hurling. However, it was his introduction to Olympic handball by Ukrainian coach Olena Karpenko that ignited a deeper passion for the sport. He emphasizes that the unique experiences and opportunities that handball offered him at the age of 14-15, such as travelling abroad with the team and being part of the national team, were unparalleled and served as additional motivation to continue playing.

In terms of Irish teams, competitions were organized by age category (12-16) in Dublin, Kildare, Meath, Sligo, and Galway, providing regular opportunities for kids to play. “These competitions were well organized by the federation and the club members, who dedicated their time and made significant sacrifices to provide this opportunity to the young handball generation.”.

Are you even more curious to learn more about Chris's journey? Let's delve deeper into the interview.

For what teams did you play in the Irish league?

I played mostly for Kildare, a club that entered the national league for the first time when we all were 16, until 2009. Then I played for Dublin International for 2 years, and in my final year, I joined UCD because I believed there would be more needed for players compared to Dublin International. That was a good last year played in Ireland because we kinda surprise everyone, we've got to the final and lost in front of Dublin International.

During that time, it was challenging to find players. We had around 10 players, and our coach, Alexander Marcović, also played on the team.

There was an issue with the new beginners, this highlights the importance of introducing handball in primary and secondary schools so that people become familiar with the sport by the time they reach university.

How was your experience playing for the national team?

As a teenager, there wasn't an official national team, it was more like a selection team that would travel to Europe to compete.

The first trip was to Liverpool, where we played against teams from England and Scotland. In the boys' team, we were under 15, but we were still a year younger than the other teams, which put us at a disadvantage. Despite this, the girls' team, who were at the right age, managed to win the tournament.

There was definitely talent within our team, but it's worth mentioning that the international trips were organized by individuals from different clubs. One key figure in organizing these trips was Robert Hamm, a German coach who lived in Sligo, West Ireland. He played a crucial role in introducing Brian Campion, one of my podcast partners, to the sport. Robert Hamm was based in Sligo and had extensive connections within the European handball community, which allowed him to bring teams together. He often served as our coach, sometimes alongside Olena Karpenko, and our team consisted of players from Dublin, Kildare, Cork, Sligo, and Galway.

The first major trip I did was at 15-16 years old. We flew to Belgium, played some games in there, than took the train to Germany, played some games in there and than ended up in Prague and play another tournament there.

The second time, it was in Vienna. There is a big youth tournament every year in August as well. So was a kind of, let’s say, unofficial national team, was just somebody who wanted to create opportunities for young players to go abroad and experience things. I think that was very positive because that help gave us a good idea of what is this sport like in another countries.

At the age of 17, I played for the first time officially at the Challenge Trophy in 2007 which took place in Luxembourg, the modern version is the EHF Trophy, and was basically a competition for the Emerging Nations: Luxembourg, Scotland, England, Faroe Islands and Malta.

The overall experience was driven by the commitment of the players and coaches because even we were not the best of the times or the worst of the times, we were paying to be there. That was the key thing. It was a different kind of level of commitment because it wasn't just putting time into it because you're good in this sport, and you're being paid to do it. It was the opposite, we were sacrificing to be a part of it. This is something that many people either don't understand or don't consider as a possibility, but it is the reality. Despite the significant financial investment, there was a strong bond among everyone involved because we were all in it together, sacrificing for the sport, representing our country, and contributing to the community. Interestingly, even though we were representing the country, it's clear that there wasn't much recognition within the Irish handball community in those final years of the team as so many of us were based abroad.

What were the difficulties that you have faced playing for Ireland, and how you kept the motivation to keep playing?

I guess it was the difference between the level played between the teams that you are playing against. It’s a kind of, you always saw these little kinds of glamours of hope in it, knowing that if everything was perfect, if preparation time was there, if there was money to go into preparing the team... I know that everyone did as much as they could to prepare the team, but the players were all either studying or working full time; some had families, so you can never truly say that you go into a tournament or a game knowing that you've done absolutely everything you could, and then you come against the players who train every single day of the week, and they are professional players. That's a very difficult place to begin with, and looking back at it, seeing how close you would be to some teams and also feeling that it is so far away. I think that the Faroe Islands, for example, are a very good one. We played against them many times, but the last time was in 2011. We had a home tournament, the Challenge Trophy, which was in Limerick, and we played against them in the first game, which ended 30–20. There were 4 teams: Ireland, England, Georgia, and the Faroe Islands, and now, 12 years later, Georgia and the Faroe Islands have both qualified for the European Championship for the first time.

There was a big thing throughout that time, and even now, when you talk with some people involved in handball, they are like “All these emerging nations will never get close to where they need to be.”, which is not true because there are 2 of the 4 teams that actually qualified for the European Championship.

During that tournament, something happened all over again that weekend because we had very talented players, 7-9 at that level, and we were 2 goals down midway through the second half against the Faroe Islands. I remember that was that kind of belief within the team, like “we actually played 45 minutes against them, and we are at the same level”. However, over the 60 minutes, it was just a little bit short. The same happened against Georgia and against England; I think we were winning by 4–5 goals at half-time and ended up losing the game, and this is against players that were training for the Olympics in 2012.

Things like that just show how close we were to that level. Our team was a mix of players, playing in Ireland and outside of Ireland. At that time, I had just moved to Germany to play, Brian Campion had moved to Austria to play, and we had a couple of other players who were living in different countries playing too.

Looking back at it now, seeing how close we were to that level, seeing how these 2 countries have developed since then, and seeing Ireland stagnate or go down from there...

There was a big effort a couple of years afterward from the federation, which actually started to spend more money on developing the national team. After a couple of years, it has finished completely. Maybe it was too much money spent, and maybe it was an expectation that automatically went to the next level, but I think that we all know that these things take 10–15–20 years to happen. Faroe Islands is a great example of that because at that exact time, when we were playing against them, as I spoke with them in April when I interviewed them, they saw under 11-year-olds playing and thinking that they actually had potential, and this is the generation that is leading the golden generation in Faroe Islands. They said that the national team needs to play each year until they are ready to play at the next level.

I think that is the biggest frustration, other teams are progressing. We may never be a professional team, but we do have players who are playing professionally, guys who are making the effort to get better, but there needs to be some kind of development halfway for the young players to come through.

What was the best tournament played and why?

It probably would be the 2011 tournament in Limerick because that was organized very well by the federation and everyone at the time and was a packed hall for every game. It was at the time when Lucas O’Callaghan was the general manager of the federation. He tried to bring a lot of money into the sport in Ireland, and he had ambitions for the sport, which I think everyone should appreciate. He tried to bring it to a different level in terms of organization. It was a great tournament because there were a lot of youth players brought from Dublin to Limerick to watch the sport, lots of clinics to introduce the sport team to the young people, and the level of handball was very good, as we saw some of the England players involved in the British team in the Olympics, and the Faroe Islands and Georgia ended up being European championship qualifiers.

Ireland didn't beat the UK in the last game, which probably should have. That was a disappointment at the time, but it made no difference in terms of the success of the event; it was really well organized, and everyone was taken care of. Very good experience!

You can pick the victories of a tournament, which is nice at the time, and you feel that is going somewhere, but looking back at it, unfortunately, it wasn't a particularly positive thing. Even in the last tournament played in 2019 with the Emerging Nations Championship in Georgia, we won 2 games, drew with Nigeria and drew with India that ended up in losing the game in front at the penalties. In the tournament, there were lots of positive things, not because of the results but because of the level of play. We lost the first game against the USA, which was 37-32 and this is the USA team that has played in the last world championship, almost exactly the same team.

We were playing at a good level, but with a very limited quad, this is a kind of frustrating thing about it. We were playing basically with 10 players for the whole tournament.

This last tournament was a positive experience. COVID came after that, and we proposed plans for the national team just before COVID came, and then once handball began in Ireland, we found out that there is no national team anymore and that the federation will focus on younger teams.

It is a pity, as in the most recent years, there were a few players who were based in Ireland and were not used to playing enough.

At the last tournament, there were only 10 players. We had a squad of 14, as that was as many they were allowed to bring to that tournament, but there were only 9 or 10 of us being used all the time and kind of trusted by the coach, which was probably not the right thing. We were pushed to play as much as possible during the matches. When it had to play seven games in nine days, it was tough.

It is a pity, as there were a lot of young players coming into the Premier League, and I know some young players that are eligible to play for Ireland who have grown up in another country but are either going to not play internationally or going to play for another team.

I know a young guy whose father is Irish who is now playing in France and is likely to play for Great Britain because Ireland is never reachable to him. Another person's son is 16 years old; he's playing in Austria at a very high level. His father is Irish and would want to play for Ireland, but there is no action at the moment, so most probably he will play for Austria soon. Another player was missed because nothing is happening right now.

My argument against just focusing on young teams right now is that you are missing out on players at the moment. Yes, the team might not be able to qualify for any championships, but the team a few years ago was in a place where they were fighting against teams that were qualified for the championships, so it can't be that bad compared with the level of the Irish clubs. The national team level was high compared with the national league. Back in 2019, a different level was seen that could be a wake-up call at the club level on how far the national team could go with players living in other countries and playing internationally. That created the high level of handball that created a big disconnect between the Irish handball community and the national team that was kind of running by itself.

Do you want to know Chris' life as a commentator at the European Handball Federation? Stay tuned for the second part of this interview, where we delve deeper into his experiences, challenges, and memorable moments in the world of handball that tought him important lessons. Get ready to be inspired as Chris shares more fascinating insights next week. Don't miss out on this exciting continuation of his journey!