Celtic Gladiators In A Concrete Arena - St Teresea’s College Handballing Past

Foundation brothers and inaugural year students. Photograph taken outside Ilford Studio, Ingham 1934. Photo source: Muriel Regnaud, Abergowrie College. The Dream and the Journey 1933-2008, p.11 (Original in St Patrick’s Parish photograph collection).

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By Dr Bianka Vidonja Balanzategui

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Long ago, a familiar sound would echo across the playing fields of St Theresa’s College Abergowrie, as handball after handball would leave the players’ hands and thwack against the concrete wall of the looming double handball courts. Not anymore.  

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Somewhere in the passage of time, the courts were demolished and no clear photographs seem to have survived.  

The landscape of the school is now very different to when the first Christian Brothers and boarders arrived in 1934.

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The Irish-born Blessed Edmund Rice was the founder of both the Christian and the Presentation Brothers. The Christian Brothers came to Sydney on invitation in 1848, left and then when again invited, established themselves in Melbourne in 1868. Responding to invitations from numerous bishops, their educational outreach spread across Australia, arriving in the Herbert River district at the invitation of the first bishop of Townsville, Bishop Terence McGuire.

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The Australasian Provincial of the Christian Brothers accepted the invitation to establish an agricultural college, sending to the district three founding Brothers who took up residence on 26^th February 1934.

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2026 was a momentous year for St Teresa’s College, Abergowrie, for it returned, in a sense, to the fold with the conduct of the school being handed over to Edmund Rice Education Australia (EREA) with its particular educational philosophy. While football will continue to be a popular extracurricular activity organised handball competitions have been relegated to the past.

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It is said that Edmund Rice’s Christian Brothers encouraged handball because they believed that it was the perfect preparatory training for football, requiring the highest level of hand-eye coordination, ambidexterity, flexibility and spatial awareness.

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Therefore, handball, as much as football, was very competitively contested across the Catholic schools and champions were awarded with medals. Even when there were Christian Brothers Old Boys Association gatherings, a competition of handball would be on the programme.

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Accordingly, not only St Teresa’s College but most Christian Brothers’ schools in Australia boasted a handball court. The court at Abergowrie was an impressive double court.

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Traditional Irish handball is distinct from Olympic Handball and shares more with the handball (Pelota Mano) that was played by the Spanish Basques on the Fronton (court) at Trebonne.

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It is a pity that the handball courts at St Teresa’s College were demolished because today, as yesterday, handball is a popular recreational activity, even if it is no longer classed as a school sport or those who excel are rewarded with medals or trophies.  

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