LHC began life in 1968 as St. Andrew's under 14's boys school team, this team was the most successful 15/16 year old boys team of the late 60's and early 70's winning the North West of England title on no fewer than 4 occasions and being runners up in the National (mens) Championship twice.
LHC in the early 1970's played under the name of Halewood Forum Handball Club and they used to train at Bridgefield Forum in Halewood. It was carried on by the ex-pupils of St. Andrews Secondary Modern School with at least one of them Keith Clark still having strong links to the club. LHC quickly attracted other ex-pupils and quickly became an established club within a very small handball community.
LHC really began to achieve success in the early 1980's under the coaching of Mick Hegarty, who quickly identified that the players needed to become much fitter. This brought about LHC becoming one of the first clubs in the UK to begin training three times per week, as well as pre season conditioning training too. Some of Mick's training techniques were unique to say the least, one involved selected players pushing a mini-bus one hundred yards up a road whilst Mick sat inside the mini-bus with his foot on the brake pedal.
Mick coached the team from 1976 - 1989 (with the exception of two years when Mick lived in London and played for Brentwood HC). This was the first of the clubs golden periods with us winning the league and cup on numerous occasions (dates to follow as soon as I recieve them editor), and becoming arguably the most successful men's club in the history of British handball and winning the double on no fewer than 5 occasions, with these successes came the qualification into the European Cup.
Our first game in European competition involved us playing against Benfica HC (see Gallery for team pics) both home and away with the first leg being played at Kirky Sports Centre in front of a home crowd of five hundred spectators, the match was a hard fought game with Benfica coming out victors. The away leg was played in Portugal at Sporting Club Benfica their home arena in front of over two thousand spectators who in traditional mediterranean style were very vocal in their support for their team.
Our next European cup competition we were drawn against Rehovot a professional handball team from Israel, it was decided that we would play both legs of the competition in Israel. There are some fantastic stories from this trip but one that stands out is when the whole LHC team where in an Irish bar when for no reason whatsoever an Israeli male decided to ride his motorbike through the bar nearly running over Alan Henaghan. Although both games went in favour of the Israeli team as expected LHC put on a great effort and both matches were shown on the Israeli TV sports stations.
Over the next few years we played in European competition against the following teams; Hershi V&L (Holland), SC Magdeburg (East Germany before the wall came down), Kolding (Denmark) & Vikingur (twice Iceland). Again there are numerous stories regarding all of the Europoean adventures that we went on the following being just one of many; we where playing our home leg against the mighty SC Magdeburg who at the time had the world number one goalkeeper Wieland Schmidt in their goal, anyway we get a penalty and up stepped Phil Church who dummied a shot which sent Herr Schmidt into a star jump and Phil just rolled the ball into the net, intorducing the "Olly" shot as a BHA official described it.
At this time the following players were making names for themselves in the handball world; Mick Hegarty, Steph Jones, Paul & Phil Church, Peter & Tommy Irving, Les, Brian & Paul Davis, Alan & Dave Henaghan, Paul Forrester, Joe Nolan, Stephen "Grip & Bang" Farrelly, Tommy "Coconut" McNab, Dave "Bodger" Woods, Keith Clark being 1 of the 1st LHC players to play for Great Britain at under 23 level. The list of honours however does not finish there, during the clubs history no fewer than 62 players have represented their countries (England, Scotland & Wales - no Irish surprisingly!!) and 42 have played for Great Britian, in fact 4 LHC players have captained the GB Team. Most of these players representing the GB Team and going on to play in Handball World Championships throughout the world over the years. All these players named above and more later on went on to achieve national and international status, with Mick Hegarty still holding the record for most number of appearances for the Great Britain team with 55.
During these times of successes for LHC and through some hard work and effort made by Joe Nolan, Keith Clark & Phil Church there was a steady stream of young players all keen to follow in the foot steps of their handball heroes at LHC. The new players coming through in the form of the "Live Wires" Terry (Mogger) Malone, John (Macker) McCormack & Shaun (Rene) Criscuolo, the "Under Fives" Mark "the Shelf" Dowling, Andy "Flemo" Fleming & Robbie "Dawso" Dawson, the "Under Three's" Kevin Kinsley, Chris Cleary & Duffy. LHC also attracted a goalkeeper from Milton Keynes HC called Mark "Johnno" Johnson, who was arguably the top keeper in the UK at that time, Johnno moved up here and found employment and eventually a new home after lodging with Mick for awhile. After several successful years playing with LHC Johnno and his wife moved to Germany to live and work.
In 1989 Mick decided to go and live in the Isle of Man so the coaching reign was handed over to Andy Fleming, which again started another golden period for LHC and in the 1990's we won the league three successive times in a row, not to mention still being the only British team to win the Bristol International Handball Tournament (although we won the singing competion at Bristol every year). Again the evidence of new young talented players coming through the ranks was evident players such as; Tony Ditchfield, Kelvin Malone, Paul Davis, Ste Wilson. Towards the late 90's more young talented players were introduced to LHC through the hard work of Rene, Keith, Roy & Phil these talented and promising youngsters who quickly achieved success in tournaments up and dowwn the country being Ian & Neil Breen, Stuart & Andy Clark, Carl & Tommy (the Brace Bro's) and not forgetting the impressive talent of "Porno Shaun" (now how he got his name is another story which for now we'll keep secret).
Unfortunately for these young players there was no European competition at this time but the club was entered into the Commonwealth Club Championships in Kuantan, Malaysia in 1995 we actually finished in third place which to be honest was not really expected due to the heat & humidity there. This was another one of the trips when i could tell you story after story like how Roy Breen got the name "Mr. Loi" or how Dave Henaghan negotiated flights for the whole team from Singapore to Manchester when the rest of us were worried how we would get back to Kuala Lumpa after our four day excursion to Singapore. The one story that I will never forget though is our first game we were playing at 16:00hrs (4pm) hottest time of the day, and in a tin hut sports hall or should I say oven! Anyway as you can imagine our warm up was very light in just our kit, then in came our opponents a team from Nigeria all wearing full tracksuits and woolly hats and commencing to do a full thirty minute warm up. Wow hats off to them pardon the pun. Although we only got third place there in Malaysia we did come away with the top goalscorer who was the Shelf and he even managed to get into the Dream Team, in fact he managed the same thing in South Africa a couple of years later walking away top goalscorer and getting into the Dream Team again.
Recently the club has been in a state of development with our players getting older and having injuries that are harder to shake off as we get older. there is though we are pleased to say some young talented players coming through the ranks they are; Phil "Shifty" McNab, Mike & Richard Irving, Alex Page & Martin "Arsenal" Haddock, we are also developing in the local schools and we are hoping to attract some of these younger players into the Liverpool Handball Club Academy which will start this year.
The club seems to have gone full circle with Mick Hegarty taking over as Head Coach, Phil Church developing Wheelchair Handball as well as helping with coaching the Ladies team, and Andy Fleming developing the Academy. We look forward to our future young players going on and carrying with them the success and accolades that their success will inevitably bring to them (which will hopefully mean continually updating this page - Editor).
We have got friends throughout the Handball world who we regularly have contact with and plan trips for both them to visit us and us to visit them, some of these frienship are over twenty years old with teams such as SC Arminia Ochtrup, Moers & Limoges. In my biased opinion LHC are the most entertaining team both on and off the Handball court and if you need any proof of this just ask anybody who has witnessed our rendition of "Mighty Man"!!!