Aughagower handball club is back with a bang fighting off the Covid slump

They say you can’t kill a bad thing.

Aughagower Handball Club are proof that it can be even harder to kill a good thing.

The GAA’s only indoor sport was shuttered for the guts of two years by Covid-19. Anecdotally, numbers in many clubs have still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

“Covid clipped us for two years. We couldn’t have any coaching going on or games,” Michael Heraty, Aughagower Handball Club’s treasurer of 30 years told The Mayo News.

Our conversation with this club stalwart takes place on a dark February night during their first tournament since before the pre-pandemic.

From our vantage point in the club's kitchen/office/general purpose area, we peer down at a doubles game being watched by almost 30 other people. Gus Heraty, another one of Aughagower Handball Club’s founding fathers, is diligently keeping the score from his perch on our right.

When we last called in October 2019, the club were holding a weekend-long invitational tournament to mark their 25th anniversary. Back then they had around 60 members. Today, they’ve around 40 between juveniles and adults – still a healthy number for a club buried away in the hills of West Mayo.

Long gone are the days when they had to draft in 70-year-old men to reach ten members just to register as a club: “We’re back now again, rejuvenated this year where we have a crew of lads that’d be into their thirties now that played it going back years ago and they’re back playing and they’re enjoying it and we’ve a big number of them which is great,” said Heraty.

Tradition and dedication form the backbone of Aughagower Handball Club. Since opening their doors in 1994 without a penny of debt to its name, the club has produced eight All-Ireland medallists. They still run a coaching programme for youngsters – something which not every club offers.

They are too modest to admit it, but that’s the sort of unseen work that has transformed a lonely stone ball-wall into a thriving handball club.

“What we have tonight is part of what it is about, through coaching back the years, guys that have played. That’s what we like to see. And it’s nice to see the place used and not go derelict,” said Heraty.

They have a good thing going in Aughagower, but they are far from finished.

“We’re in the process of drawing down a Sports Capital Grant at the moment of €80,000. We intend to reconfigure the back of our court. It’s there over 30 years,” explained Heraty.

“We intend to put in a new shower system, power showers, get the whole lot tiled up and maybe knock out a wall. We’re even thinking of a small gym at some stage if we have the shillings for it.”

They’re also putting solar panels on the roof, an addition which will use the elusive West Mayo sunlight to leave their running costs ‘very low over time’.

Heraty, as he said himself, might be ‘getting long in the tooth’ but he’ll certainly leave the club in a better state than when he found it.