Showing posts with label Handball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Handball. Show all posts
Sunday, January 27, 2013
MALLORCA TODAY - Spain are handball world champions
Having warily suggested that Spain's men's handball team might win the world championship for the second time (http://alcudiapollensa.blogspot.com.es/2013/01/handled-ball-but-its-not-cricket.html), well, it has. Denmark have been hammered 35-19 in this afternoon's final.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Handled Ball: But it's not cricket
When I was fourteen and on a school exchange visit to Germany, I encountered a sport I hadn't seen before. Come to think of it, I had probably never heard of the sport before. Once I saw it, and once I started to play it, I wondered why it was such a mystery sport.
Handball was basketball without the fannying around and the posing. It was basketball without the stupid hoop basket. It had a goal, an altogether more inviting target. It was bedlam, fast, furious and now and then quite skilful.
It was also easy to understand. At the same time as I was baffling any German who was vaguely interested in knowing about cricket by introducing notions of bowling a maiden over, fielding at silly mid off or being given out leg before wicket (and even now if I venture the subject of cricket with a German, he or she confuses it with croquet), understanding handball was absurdly simple. Get ball, run, pass, shoot at goal. Football, but with the hand and not the foot.
It is reckoned that handball started as a sport as a means of keeping German footballers fit in the summer. Originally, it was entirely an outdoor sport, played on a football pitch and with the same size goals. There is an alternative version of handball history, one that places its origins back in the sixth century BC. Whichever version one prefers, the first official match is usually taken to have been played in 1917 and the first international in 1925, Germany beating Austria.
It was the Danes who turned handball into the indoor sport it now almost exclusively is. Some 30 years on from it having been taken indoors, handball became an Olympic sport, appropriately enough, given its modern roots with German football, at the 1972 Munich Games. What I had seen and played two years before at a school near Stuttgart could now be seen by the world. Not that I recall seeing any handball at the 1972 Games. Great Britain, of course, didn't play it. Or rather, there was a Great Britain team but it was hopeless. Among the crushing defeats it endured in the pre-Games qualifying group was a 37-12 loss to Luxembourg and a 40-5 thrashing at the hands (literally) of Spain.
The development of handball as an international sport has, to a degree, been determined by international political developments. From a sport played by Germanic countries, it became popular in the Soviet bloc, to the extent that eastern European countries dominated. The break-up of the bloc led to a further broadening as players and coaches from Hungary, East Germany and elsewhere moved, and Spain, for the first time, started to feature as a leading handball nation. Handball is now Spain's third most popular sport in terms of registered participants, placing it behind football and basketball. Spain's men's team has won three Olympic bronzes in the past five Games, and the women's team won its first bronze in London.
The men's world championship is currently being held in Spain; the country has not hosted the tournament before. In a preliminary group with Algeria, Egypt, Australia, Hungary and Croatia, the big games are against the latter two. Progress for Spain should be assured, as the top four teams qualify for the next stage. The final will be held in Barcelona on 27 January.
And Barcelona, as with football, dominates Spanish handball. FC Barcelona Intersport has won the national league more often than any other side (on eleven occasions) and has won the European cup eight times. Seven of the squad of sixteen for the world championship play for Barcelona, the next highest club representation coming not from a Spanish side but from France's Nantes (three of the squad). There is no Mallorcan in the squad, but, oddly enough, there is one member who was born in Wales. Altor Ariño, a defender, comes originally from Penarth.
Spain finished third at the last world championships in 2011. As hosts, the team will hope to go two steps better this time. Not that this will be easy for a team which was beaten in the London Olympics quarter-finals by the current world champions, France. However, such an Olympic disappointment has a precedent in being followed by triumph. In 2005, Spain became world champions having crashed out the year before in Athens. If all goes to plan, on 27 January, around about half six in the evening, if you hear shouts of joy from a bar, they will be shouts not because of football but because of handball. Spain will be champions. Or maybe not.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Handball was basketball without the fannying around and the posing. It was basketball without the stupid hoop basket. It had a goal, an altogether more inviting target. It was bedlam, fast, furious and now and then quite skilful.
It was also easy to understand. At the same time as I was baffling any German who was vaguely interested in knowing about cricket by introducing notions of bowling a maiden over, fielding at silly mid off or being given out leg before wicket (and even now if I venture the subject of cricket with a German, he or she confuses it with croquet), understanding handball was absurdly simple. Get ball, run, pass, shoot at goal. Football, but with the hand and not the foot.
It is reckoned that handball started as a sport as a means of keeping German footballers fit in the summer. Originally, it was entirely an outdoor sport, played on a football pitch and with the same size goals. There is an alternative version of handball history, one that places its origins back in the sixth century BC. Whichever version one prefers, the first official match is usually taken to have been played in 1917 and the first international in 1925, Germany beating Austria.
It was the Danes who turned handball into the indoor sport it now almost exclusively is. Some 30 years on from it having been taken indoors, handball became an Olympic sport, appropriately enough, given its modern roots with German football, at the 1972 Munich Games. What I had seen and played two years before at a school near Stuttgart could now be seen by the world. Not that I recall seeing any handball at the 1972 Games. Great Britain, of course, didn't play it. Or rather, there was a Great Britain team but it was hopeless. Among the crushing defeats it endured in the pre-Games qualifying group was a 37-12 loss to Luxembourg and a 40-5 thrashing at the hands (literally) of Spain.
The development of handball as an international sport has, to a degree, been determined by international political developments. From a sport played by Germanic countries, it became popular in the Soviet bloc, to the extent that eastern European countries dominated. The break-up of the bloc led to a further broadening as players and coaches from Hungary, East Germany and elsewhere moved, and Spain, for the first time, started to feature as a leading handball nation. Handball is now Spain's third most popular sport in terms of registered participants, placing it behind football and basketball. Spain's men's team has won three Olympic bronzes in the past five Games, and the women's team won its first bronze in London.
The men's world championship is currently being held in Spain; the country has not hosted the tournament before. In a preliminary group with Algeria, Egypt, Australia, Hungary and Croatia, the big games are against the latter two. Progress for Spain should be assured, as the top four teams qualify for the next stage. The final will be held in Barcelona on 27 January.
And Barcelona, as with football, dominates Spanish handball. FC Barcelona Intersport has won the national league more often than any other side (on eleven occasions) and has won the European cup eight times. Seven of the squad of sixteen for the world championship play for Barcelona, the next highest club representation coming not from a Spanish side but from France's Nantes (three of the squad). There is no Mallorcan in the squad, but, oddly enough, there is one member who was born in Wales. Altor Ariño, a defender, comes originally from Penarth.
Spain finished third at the last world championships in 2011. As hosts, the team will hope to go two steps better this time. Not that this will be easy for a team which was beaten in the London Olympics quarter-finals by the current world champions, France. However, such an Olympic disappointment has a precedent in being followed by triumph. In 2005, Spain became world champions having crashed out the year before in Athens. If all goes to plan, on 27 January, around about half six in the evening, if you hear shouts of joy from a bar, they will be shouts not because of football but because of handball. Spain will be champions. Or maybe not.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Rubber Ball I Come Bouncing Back To You
The BBC came to Puerto Alcúdia yesterday. Well, a Breakfast show reporter and a camera and sound crew did. Wonder where they stayed. Nice work if you can get it I suppose. I didn't see it, but I know someone who did, so this is all second-hand, but I could hardly let such a huge news item pass without mention. Apparently they didn't drag a sofa out onto the beach and interview some local celebs, of which there are very few; in fact none that spring immediately to mind. They did interview some Brit tourists - family of four, couple of old dears and someone engaged in projectile vomiting following an all-night bender; normal sort of thing.
From these chats it would seem that, despite credit crunches, recessions, global warming, plagues of locusts or whatever else might be on the horizon, the tourists will still come because of the British weather - and it was only up around the 30 mark yesterday in parts of the old country. There was also an interview with Bellevue, well not the whole of it but a director. Don't know which one; my mole didn't actually stretch to noting down names. Whoever it was said that people were spending less this year - yes, I think we knew that - but that they were spending what money they had on less frivolous things. What, would that be cartons of cigarettes and bottles of spirits? He also said that bookings were up. Really? Not what I'd heard. Unless last year's were particularly low. A little bird, actually a pretty big one, told me that there was a fair old amount of knock-down being flogged to Spaniards, so perhaps the numbers are indeed up.
But it seems that the BBC showed a number of nice shots of Alcúdia, the beach, the mountains, the promenade etc. Pretty good publicity, reckoned my contact. Yea, it would be, like the publicity when the Holiday programme, a few years back, voted Alcúdia the best beach in the Med. Damn good publicity. Publicity to do something with. Wonder if the town hall knows. Wonder if they ever knew about that Holiday programme vote.
Perhaps it was the BBC crawling all over the beach that put a stop to it, but there was meant to have been a beach handball competition going on at the "sports beach" yesterday. I went along. I quite like handball. There were the stands that sit on the beach at the top of The Mile; there were a couple of games going on; and there was not sight nor sound of a handball player. Maybe they thought it was too hot.
Handball is a mystery game to the Brit, be it on sand or on court. It's all that cricket I suppose, but the British never took to court sports that involved putting balls into nets or over them, except with the aid of a racket or if they were girls at grammar schools. I once partook in a battle of the sexes netball game. It had all looked so easy until it started. Basketball only ever caught on because it was well and truly Niked and given street cred, and afforded the opportunity for lengthy spells of on-court posing and speaking in Americanisms: dee-fence. Other nations can't get enough of these sports. Stick a bunch of Germans on a beach and within five minutes they'll have rigged up a volleyball net.
There was a time when the beach was a relatively sedate place. Not now it isn't. Football started it, and before we knew it every beach was staging a mini-Olympics. The one sport with a strong beach tradition which isn't much played here is cricket. Try getting the ball to lift off a good length on Alcúdia or Muro beach. Sand's too fine. You need some good tidal flats for a game of beach cricket. Preferably, therefore, the ideal beach sport doesn't actually involve the beach. Football is only any good if you can give the ball a firm old welly; otherwise it's that sand again. There are any number of potential beach sports that could avoid the inconvenience of sand - beach javelin, beach hammer throw, beach target shooting. Something tells me though that they might not quite catch on.
There is one "sport", one sport alone that needs to be shown the door of the beach stadium and cast into the wilderness of the utterly irritating - bloody paddle tennis with those wooden rackets. Try getting some beach shut-eye and along come a couple of wannabe Nadalists and ... dock-dock, dock-dock. Stop it.
Anyway, coming back to handball. There is an Alcúdia handball team. Not that you would expect to find its numbers filled with Brits; it is very much the preserve of continental Europeans, such as Frederick at Bistro Bell and Erik from the El Limón estate agency who play for the team. Like the Alcúdia rugby team of which I spoke some months ago, it is not widely known that these teams exist. Perhaps the BBC should come and broadcast their matches.
Finally - there was a comment sent for Sunday's piece from someone who seemed to want some advice on real estate. There was an email address which was bounced back, so who knows, but if the sender reads this, please use the email address below and not the comments facility. Thank you.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Tommy Steele, "Little White Bull". There is a karaoke youtube but it lacks the brilliance of Dimple Diamond who himself should do a version of this Uncle Mac classic. Today's title - who did that bouncing?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
From these chats it would seem that, despite credit crunches, recessions, global warming, plagues of locusts or whatever else might be on the horizon, the tourists will still come because of the British weather - and it was only up around the 30 mark yesterday in parts of the old country. There was also an interview with Bellevue, well not the whole of it but a director. Don't know which one; my mole didn't actually stretch to noting down names. Whoever it was said that people were spending less this year - yes, I think we knew that - but that they were spending what money they had on less frivolous things. What, would that be cartons of cigarettes and bottles of spirits? He also said that bookings were up. Really? Not what I'd heard. Unless last year's were particularly low. A little bird, actually a pretty big one, told me that there was a fair old amount of knock-down being flogged to Spaniards, so perhaps the numbers are indeed up.
But it seems that the BBC showed a number of nice shots of Alcúdia, the beach, the mountains, the promenade etc. Pretty good publicity, reckoned my contact. Yea, it would be, like the publicity when the Holiday programme, a few years back, voted Alcúdia the best beach in the Med. Damn good publicity. Publicity to do something with. Wonder if the town hall knows. Wonder if they ever knew about that Holiday programme vote.
Perhaps it was the BBC crawling all over the beach that put a stop to it, but there was meant to have been a beach handball competition going on at the "sports beach" yesterday. I went along. I quite like handball. There were the stands that sit on the beach at the top of The Mile; there were a couple of games going on; and there was not sight nor sound of a handball player. Maybe they thought it was too hot.
Handball is a mystery game to the Brit, be it on sand or on court. It's all that cricket I suppose, but the British never took to court sports that involved putting balls into nets or over them, except with the aid of a racket or if they were girls at grammar schools. I once partook in a battle of the sexes netball game. It had all looked so easy until it started. Basketball only ever caught on because it was well and truly Niked and given street cred, and afforded the opportunity for lengthy spells of on-court posing and speaking in Americanisms: dee-fence. Other nations can't get enough of these sports. Stick a bunch of Germans on a beach and within five minutes they'll have rigged up a volleyball net.
There was a time when the beach was a relatively sedate place. Not now it isn't. Football started it, and before we knew it every beach was staging a mini-Olympics. The one sport with a strong beach tradition which isn't much played here is cricket. Try getting the ball to lift off a good length on Alcúdia or Muro beach. Sand's too fine. You need some good tidal flats for a game of beach cricket. Preferably, therefore, the ideal beach sport doesn't actually involve the beach. Football is only any good if you can give the ball a firm old welly; otherwise it's that sand again. There are any number of potential beach sports that could avoid the inconvenience of sand - beach javelin, beach hammer throw, beach target shooting. Something tells me though that they might not quite catch on.
There is one "sport", one sport alone that needs to be shown the door of the beach stadium and cast into the wilderness of the utterly irritating - bloody paddle tennis with those wooden rackets. Try getting some beach shut-eye and along come a couple of wannabe Nadalists and ... dock-dock, dock-dock. Stop it.
Anyway, coming back to handball. There is an Alcúdia handball team. Not that you would expect to find its numbers filled with Brits; it is very much the preserve of continental Europeans, such as Frederick at Bistro Bell and Erik from the El Limón estate agency who play for the team. Like the Alcúdia rugby team of which I spoke some months ago, it is not widely known that these teams exist. Perhaps the BBC should come and broadcast their matches.
Finally - there was a comment sent for Sunday's piece from someone who seemed to want some advice on real estate. There was an email address which was bounced back, so who knows, but if the sender reads this, please use the email address below and not the comments facility. Thank you.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Tommy Steele, "Little White Bull". There is a karaoke youtube but it lacks the brilliance of Dimple Diamond who himself should do a version of this Uncle Mac classic. Today's title - who did that bouncing?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
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