Handball hands Scots chance for Olympics

Published on Sunday 2 December 2007 01:14

WHAT would happen if you plucked 14 ordinary people doing ordinary jobs from various places in the UK, and delivered them to a world-class sports academy, giving them enough money on which to live, and exposing them to regular, high-level competition?

In an intriguing experiment, a bit like Big Brother with a purpose, Britain's leading handball players have been selected to spend the next five years in Denmark, a handball hotbed, based at the Aarhus Handball Academy. Each has been placed with a Danish club with the idea that by 2012 they will form a crack British handball team, or separate teams for men and women, to compete at the London Olympics.

The plan hatched by the British Handball Association will be backed annually with 1.2m of lottery funding, and five Scots are among the players selected.

"Britain's never had a handball team in the Olympics," says Johnnie McAleer, who was working as an actuary in Glasgow when the opportunity arose to become a full-time handball exponent. "There was a British team in the qualifiers in the 1970s or 1980s, I think, but it's not a game that's ever caught on here. I don't know why, because it's the second-biggest ball sport in the world, and the biggest women's game."

As 25-year-old McAleer acknowledges, many big promises have been made about the 2012 Olympics, most concerning the legacy they will leave in their wake, but these Games have already altered his life in singular fashion. When they were awarded to London, a new world of possibilities opened up for him - and other home-based handball players.

"One day I was working in finance, finishing my actuarial exams, the next I'm a full-time handball player," he observes. "We always thought the London Olympics would be a great opportunity, but it was difficult to imagine what might happen.

"Our lives have changed dramatically - it's phenomenal really. I was working for Aon in Glasgow, and they gave me a year-long sabbatical. So I've put my career on hold. I can't say I'm gutted to be playing handball twice a day."

Brian Bartlett, 21, another Scot chosen for the Aarhus academy, was employed as an electrical technician in an oil refinery in Grangemouth.

"I had to resign," he reveals. "I was about to go offshore, and they couldn't give me a year out. It was the hardest decision of my life, but I have no regrets. I thought about it from the point of view of a third person. You only live once.

"And the chance to live in another country and have this experience was too good to miss. Working offshore would pretty much have been the end of my handball career anyway. I'd have had to play on the rig."

McAleer and Bartlett started playing handball at school, while a third Scot, Alan Stokes, was introduced to its intricacies a bit later, through his sports coaching studies. The other two Scots involved are husband and wife Gary and Lynn McCafferty, who are members of the UK's most successful outfit, the Tryst '77 Handball Club in Cumbernauld. McAleer and Bartlett are also members.

The club owe their success and a Europe-wide reputation mainly to their driving force, Mark McLaughlan, and this year they are celebrating their 30th anniversary, as their name indicates.

Fourteen British handball players, 14 men and four women, are currently seeking their fortunes in Denmark, and another four men will head off in January. They have progressed through the British Handball Association's talent identification scheme, which whittled 2,500 wannabes - most of whom had not played the game - down to a mere ten hopefuls.

Height was one of the main criteria in the selection process: the average for the British men's team is 6ft 4in, which makes them relatively small in international terms.

The programme is not without controversy, not least because the annual investment of 1.2m is servicing the elite end of a game which does not boast a substantial playing base. Indeed, the paucity of playing talent is illustrated by the fact that the departure of the five Scots has undermined the club scene in Scotland: the men's league has been reduced from three teams to two.

"It is a groundbreaking programme and an experiment," McAleer reflects. "We have no track record, we haven't qualified for Beijing, but we have five years to become competitive."

Bartlett stresses: "Our goal is to get to London, and compete with the best in the world. But once there, with the crowd behind you, who knows what can happen."