'It’s pure hard work' - After making breakthrough, Walsh eyeing handball title tilt
EYES ON THE PRIZE: David Walsh of Cork in attendance at the 2025 oneills.com 4-Wall Men's & Ladies' Senior Singles All Ireland Championship Launch. Pic: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile
It hasn’t been a straightforward journey to this point for 25-year-old Cork handballer David Walsh but ahead of a crunch weekend in the oneills.com All-Ireland Senior Singles, the Mallow right-hander wouldn’t have it any other way.
The usual path in handball to senior stardom is a stellar underage career. Walsh, however, was not highly-ranked in singles play as a minor and clawed his way to the elite ranks by winning doubles titles – but, in 2024, he emerged as the best young player in the country.
On Saturday in Shannon, Walsh plays Rory Grace from Tipperary in the round of 16. Walsh currently holds the number one ranking in the country, having made the semi-finals of the World Championships in November and winning two ranking tournaments since.
“It’s pure hard work really,” Walsh told the .
“When I was juvenile I played a lot of doubles with Tadhg O’Neill up to minor level and he was a really, really top minor and then we went on to win the Intermediate Doubles too. It was just pure hard work, training, showing up every day and then the results started to come.”
And how they did. Walsh stunned the handball world when toppling All-Ireland champion Robbie McCarthy in an 11-9 tiebreaker in the quarter-final of the Worlds to really mark his arrival and while he subsequently lost the semi to Diarmaid Nash, he has kicked on since.
Walsh is no longer under the radar but that won’t change his approach, he said.
“Kind of but not really to be honest. I still take every game as it comes. Last year was just my first Senior Championship as a senior player so it was a quick turnaround from that championship to the World Championships and going on to the Golden Gloves and the Southern Classic and to be here now.
“I know the quality that is in the field, they still have loads and loads of senior titles between them. It’s still a really, really tough tournament to win so I’ll just be focusing on every shot as it comes and taking it from there.” That statement win over Westmeath maestro McCarthy was the culmination of a long journey but Walsh has further aspirations.
“Maybe because of the magnitude of the tournament, being a World Championships, but I suppose when I look back at it, I didn’t push on from that game, I would have liked to have pushed on in that tournament but I’ll learn from the experience I’m sure and it will help me going forward but yeah, that was definitely a career highlight.
“The experience of losing the semi-final will stand to me though. The experience of being in that court for the hour, when I’m put in that position again I’ll know how it feels – what I could have done better that time, what I will do better the next time.”
If Walsh beats Grace, he will play the winner of fellow Corkman Michael Hedigan (Liscarroll) and Monaghan’s Gavin Coyle in Sunday’s quarter-final at Croke Park. Expected to join him there, barring upsets which are possible, are McCarthy, Nash and world champion Paul Brady.
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