Murphy and Joyce enjoy first senior success
Paddy Murphy and Niall Joyce Paddy Murphy won the Senior Doubles title.
By Paul Fitzpatrick
The traditional Irish game of hardball has been enjoying something of a renaissance in recent years, with increased entry numbers and live streaming of matches on Spórt TG4.
The game is played, as the name suggests, with a hard ball made of cork and goatskin which lends itself to a fast-paced code.
The big winners in doubles weekend were Mayomen Paddy Murphy and Niall Joyce, who took the Senior Doubles title home to Claremorris. They defeated former winners Daniel Relihan and Michael Hedigan from Liscarrol in Cork (21-13, 21-7) to pick up arguably the biggest win of their careers to date.
“Happy to win it. It’s nice to have our names on the roll of honour with some famous Mayo players like Dessie Keegan, Stephen Cooney, Peadar Magee, Paddy Bolingbrooke and Padraig McCormack,” Murphy told gaa.ie.
“We’re privileged to make a bit of history in that way. Growing up it was always an All-Ireland that I kind of knew I had the capacity to win so it’s really nice to win it now.”
The pair won the Minor Hardball Doubles championship and both won the Minor Hardball Singles so their credentials were strong.
“I didn’t win a Minor Singles in anything else and it was the most achievable one with the standard in the grade being so high,” said Murphy, who won that Minor Doubles 10 years ago while nursing a broken finger.
“We didn’t really expect to win, the Cork boys are a well-established team - they won the 40x20 Senior Doubles not long ago. But we played very well on the day, served well, killed well. Niall was very, very solid.”
Next up for the Claremorris men is a trip to Valencia for the Spanish Open at the end of this month.
“I was frustrated with my year leading up to it just with injuries so it was nice to get some silverware,” said Murphy.
Meanwhile, the Minor Doubles went to Kilkenny's Andrew Brennan and Sean Morrissey, with Sligo's Travis Gibbons and TJ Foody taking silver.
Kerrymen John Joe Quirke and Dominic Lynch were impressive winners of the Masters final against Jamie O'Donnell and Donnacha O'Dea from Cork.
Galway's pair Seamus Conneely and Conor Noone got the better of Mayo's Shane Heraty and Lorcan Conlon in the Junior Doubles final.
The Hardball Singles Championships are down for decision this weekend at the National Handball Centre, Croke Park with Niall O'Connor (Kildare), Ciaran Neary and John Hayes (both Kilkenny), Daniel Relihan (Cork) and Evan Murphy (Limerick) in contention for the Senior Singles.
Finally, there will be a slideshow on the history of Irish handball with previously-unseen photographs on Sunday at the national centre (3.30pm) to coincide with the hardball singles finals.