'I had never seen a game of handball before I started playing'

"I had never seen a game of handball before I started playing. But I always remember dad saying that DJ Carey was a fantastic handballer, and that it would be good for my hurling over the winter months. So that’s how it started; but over time, the handball took over.

“One of the main attractions of handball for me was that it challenges you as an individual. It’s you against another player. You can’t really blame anybody else if things go wrong. The other thing was the international element. By the time I was 16, I had travelled to my first world championships in the US. Handball gave me opportunities that I didn’t feel I could get with hurling or football.

While it is an individual sport in many ways, I’m lucky to have a great club in Moycullen

“The pinnacle was winning the All Ireland 40 X 20 Senior Singles Championship last year. That’s the handball equivalent of your Sam Maguire or Liam McCarthy Cup, and on the back of that, I captained the Irish team at the World Championships in Minnesota, which was a huge honour.

“My style of play is definitely on the offensive side. Like hurling and football, you’re just not going to win games sitting back and hoping that a top player is going to make mistakes. You have to make them make mistakes; and make good shots yourself.

The handball season will kick off again here in November with the Golden Gloves in Belfast; though this year I’ve also travelled to the US to play in pro tournaments

“While it is an individual sport in many ways, I’m lucky to have a great club in Moycullen. I also get support when it comes to strength and conditioning, sports psychology, physio and nutrition; but I also owe a lot to my mom and dad. The only way you can get any good at handball is to travel and compete and to lose and learn… and hopefully you’ll start winning a few games as well. Only that they were willing to support me, I wouldn’t be where I am now.

“The handball season will kick off again here in November with the Golden Gloves in Belfast; though this year I’ve also travelled to the US to play in pro tournaments. They are usually fleeting visits, but in May, I played in Salt Lake City and spent another week going out to farms as part of my work. I visited farms in Utah ranging from 40 cows, right up to 7,500 dairy cows and 19,000 head when you include the young stock and the beef animals. It was very interesting to see – a totally different system to what we are trying to do here.”

Study and sport

“My granduncle, Brian Mulkerrins, was a suckler farmer in Moycullen, Co Galway, and our house is built on one of his out-blocks. We always helped him until he passed away in 2015, and today, we keep drystock there.

“While my parents are teachers, I was always interested in farming. I studied animal and crop production in UCD, but my experience was a bit different because I was on the Irish scholarship with Bord na Gaeilge. We speak Irish at home, and through the scholarship, I had the opportunity to live in ‘Teach na Gaeilge’ for the first two years. There was 24 of us there and everyone spoke Irish, which was great, especially in first year, when you really didn’t know anybody.

In 2012, I was lucky enough to win the Dr Tony O’Neill Sportsperson of the year award

“As part of the scholarship, you are expected to organise events through Irish, and that’s how we started Comórtas Liathróid Láimhe UCD (handball competition, through Irish). Things like the refereeing and trophies would be in Irish to promote the language, and it has worked very well, with many charities benefitting as a result.

“In 2012, I was lucky enough to win the Dr Tony O’Neill Sportsperson of the year award (UCD). I also got on the UCD Ad Astra Elite Sports Scholarship Programme for my third and fourth year, which was fantastic, but the School of Agriculture was also very supportive and flexible, and by the time I left UCD, I was in the top three or four handball players in the country.”

Working with Teagasc

“I finished my under-grad in May 2015, and had actually accepted a place in Galway on the H Dip through Irish to teach ag science and biology, when one of my lecturers in UCD told me about the Master’s in agricultural innovation support funded by the Teagasc Walsh Fellowships Scheme.

“During the programme, you are given a research topic and mine was on the BETTER Sheep Farm programme, looking at practice change. I learned so much and received a Teagasc Overseas Training award, which gave me the the opportunity to go to New Zealand with another student, Conor Houlihan, to add to our respective research studies.

“Then in 2018, a position came up on the Teagasc Aurivo joint programme, as a dairy discussion group facilitator. I cover all of Connaught, Donegal and Westmeath. It’s a great job, on farms most days of the week and it’s been a fantastic experience. However, in January, I will be starting a new role as a lecturer/beef teacher in Mountbellew Agricultural College.”

Bringing handball to Uganda

“After I finished my Master’s in 2017, having met Brother Tony Dolan of the Franciscan Brothers, I had the opportunity to go to Uganda with my girlfriend, Eilish.

“The brothers run Adraa Agricultural College in northwest Uganda, a very disadvantaged area where you also have a lot of refugee camps. They offer courses on vegetable production, bee-keeping, pig production etc and the approach is very much ‘teach a man to fish’ – giving people the skills and the knowledge to do things for themselves.

“Before going to Uganda, I spoke at mass in Moycullen and raffled an All-Ireland hurling ticket and thanks to people’s generosity, raised €3,000. The main project that we funded was a demonstration farm in the local secondary school. While the agricultural college has staff going out to villages to advocate agricultural practices, my thinking was you could have somebody come in on a weekly basis to show young people at school level everything from seed bed preparation to harvesting, and that they would bring that back to their own villages then.

“But Brother Tony also thought there was a great opportunity in the area for a sport like handball; once you have the walls, it’s very cheap to set up. They had already started with two walls at the agricultural college and we funded another wall at the school. They have taken to it really well and a little dream of mine would be to sponsor somebody to come over to Ireland to teach them more playing techniques and things like that.

“Though if we could get a player from Uganda to enter a tournament here at some stage, I’d be over the moon.”