First published in ‘Top Ace’ Annual 2008 and reproduced here by kind permission of Cumann Liathróid Láimhe na hÉireann

The palms of Joey Maher’s hands each have a distinct impression hollowed out of them. They are the imprints of thousands of hand balls struck with force, often achieving a speed of more than 150 kilometres per hour.

But these hands have done more than brought Joey to an unparalled roll call of honours in the game of handball.

These hands have painted and decorated houses and buildings in the town of Drogheda and throughout the province of Leinster. They have calmly directed seething traffic in the Canadian city of Toronto. For a few years, they pulled pints and filled tumblers of spirits when Joey owned a pub. These same hands plucked the strings of a guitar in ballrooms and cabarets the length and breadth of Ireland and they even made a winning appearance on the Seventies TV equivalent of ‘The X Factor’. In later life, the hands soothed and trained greyhounds.

Any one of these activities would be life enough for anyone. One man. Two hands. Multiple lives.

In this conversation with An Fear Rua, Joey looks back on a fulfilling seventy five years …

Who were the Mahers originally?
As far as I know, my great grandfather came up from a place called Three Castles on the Kilkenny / Tipperary border. His name was John Maher and he came up here to Drogheda and he married a woman by the name of Duffy from the Back Strand and then, I don’t know what happened, but he went back down to the Three Castles. He is supposed to have been killed in some kind of an accident where he fell out of the top window of a pub. I don’t know what he worked at in Tipperary but he came up to work in a place called McCann and Hills, a seeds and flour merchants.

My father was born in Drogheda. He had another brother, Joe Maher, who was drowned at sea. My grandfather married a woman from the county Meath, just outside Navan, Johnstown. I see myself as a Drogheda man and a Louth man through and through. I was born in the Cottage Hospital up here.

Handball – the early years

Did anyone in your family play handball?
On my mother’s side there were the Sarsfields. My uncle Pappy and Eugene and Jem. They were all good footballers and handballers. They played in Drogheda. I started playing at nine years of age when I went to school. We’d come down and play after school, go home and do our exercises and come back over that night. The big fellas would be in the alley at that time and we’d be retrieving the ball for them over the wall and we’d get a few bob off them at the end of the night. When it got we’d get into the ball alley before we’d go home and go to bed.

Handball is a game that you just won’t become good at by just going to a ball alley once a week, or even twice a week. You just have to be in the ball alley every day. All the old men would come and watch us playing handball there every night. It was a kind of a retreat for them to come to the ball alley every evening after work.

The first team I played football with was the Stars and they were a nursery for the Wolfe Tones and I played under 16 with the Stars and then I played minor and junior with the Tones. I got my two hands broken playing Gaelic football and an amazing thing about that, the same fella broke them in two different games. That’s why I never really won an All Ireland minor handball because it happened when I was just about seventeen years of age. I played minor and won a Leinster minor but it curtailed me a lot. I just didn’t have enough practice done, with the arm being broken.

You started in the alley in Millmount and that was associated with a GAA club and it was obviously a real social outlet for men in the evening time?
It was a social outlet. The Reillys and the Confreys and the Sheilses were all good footballers and handballers. The Reillys played with the Tones and the Confreys played with the Oliver Plunketts. There was always a big tournament at Millmount. The O’Reilly Cup every year. Great handballers used to come from Garristown and Ardcath, Clogherhead, Togher. I remember we were only affiliated for ten years and between the lot of us we had ten All Irelands – the Reillys and Confreys and myself.

Handball – the breakthrough

You started playing at the age of nine but at what age did the handball become serious?
I suppose coming up to minor, when we were picked to represent Louth. The Leinster minor final in 1952 was played against Kilkenny below in Fahy’s Cross, in Offaly and in the semi-final we played Westmeath beyond in Multyfarnham, in the Franciscan College over there. We played chaps by the name of Mullen and Fox. The first minor match was against Dublin down in Murray’s Cross here. Willie Lambe was a minor and he played with this big tall chap. Myself and Paddy Wright beat them in Murray’s Cross. Then we played the Leinster semi-final beyond in Multyfarnham. That was in ’52.

The first time I played in Croke Park was in a junior singles against Willie Lambe in 1956. I won the hardball singles and softballs singles and a hardball doubles with Joe McArdle from Dunleer.

Handball – the end game

What was your last serious competitive game of handball?
In ’74 I won my last senior All Ireland. I think it was Brian Colleran I played in Croke Park. I did well in ’73, ’74 and then I played in the Masters that year and I won two Masters but I remember then they brought in the rule that you couldn’t play senior and play Masters because it didn’t look well, an oul fella of forty winning All Irelands. Now they can play in anything. I went on to be All Ireland senior singles softball champion. I was ‘over forties’ champion and I was American Masters champion.

‘For Joey Maher… Opportunity Knocks!’

Was there ever a time when you walked out of a hand ball alley for the last time?
What took over then was that we had a band. We won ‘Opportunity Knocks’ on ITV with Hughie Green. I’d be playing the handball and I’d be playing in the band and you’d be out all night with the band. Your training would be interfered with. There were five of us in it. Three of my sons and my daughter. We travelled all over the country. We played under the name of ‘The Maher Family’. We played in ballrooms but they were coming to an end at that time. It was around the mid-Seventies. We used be a support act and then we’d be brought back on our own. We played Country & Western and the kids played the pop. I did mostly Country & Irish on vocals.

Tell us about ‘Opportunity Knocks’.
Hughie Green came to Ireland doing auditions. I think it was ’74 or ’75… ’75, I think. The auditions were in the Country Club, in Portmarnock. We were picked and then we had to go to London. We won it once and we were brought back. There was a ‘clapometer’ in the studio and the viewers voted as well. When the votes would all come in, we’d know we were being called back. They’d ring you and tell you. We topped the votes and we’d have topped it again only there was a postal strike in Ireland and the Irish votes never got to England. All the mail was left above in the docks.

It made the band even more famous. We used to be in the Earl of Desmond below in Tralee and we played the Manhattan there. We played in Hayes’s where the GAA was founded in Thurles and we played the ballrooms in Kingscourt and places. We played all over the place.

When we started the pub I kept on with that business but the boys all went on with the band. They’re still in the music business. As a matter of fact, I’ve a grand daughter; she won two Feis Ceoils this year. That was a big achievemen