O’Sullivan senses Olympic handball has bright future
But earlier this week he took up a completely different role in the sporting sphere — high performance advisor to the Irish Olympic Handball Association (IOHA).
Helping out his friend Lúcás Ó Ceallacháin, IOHA general manager, O’Sullivan will put a professional management team in place to give the Irish senior side the structure it needs to succeed at international level.
“He [Lúcás] approached me there a couple of months ago trying to put a high-performance plan in place and asked would I be interested in helping him out,” said O’Sullivan.
“I’m doing it purely in an honorary capacity, there’s no payments for it.
“Lúcás is a good guy and the minute I spoke to him it seemed they were on the cusp of a big leap forward so I’m in there putting structures in place. At the moment the national team is the priority.
“It’s kind of a mirror of the rugby model I worked with in America where some of the team were overseas playing professionally and others were amateurs. I’m hoping when we go to the Europeans in June we’ll have a chance of qualifying to get the rankings up into the world’s top 30.”
