ANCIENT ORIGINS

BALL GAME HANDED DOWN BY ANCIENT GREEKS

The ancient Greeks appear to have played handball long before the modern game took off. Homer's The Odyssey describes a game called "uranias" that resemble today's handball. The author wrote: "One of them bending right back, hurled the ball high up into the shadowy clouds; then the other leapt high from the ground and deftly caught it before his feet touched the ground."

That moment is caught on a relief on a gravestone found on the city walls of Athens dating back to 600BC, while the Romans played something similar to Greek "harpaston", which also closely resembles handball.

Much later, in the Middle Ages, Walther von der Vogelweide, the German lyrical poet, sang of "catch ball", but it was not until the 19th century that the modern game was developed in Denmark, with rules first set out in 1848. In 1910, Swedish players started to use the name "handball" and in 1912 an International Football Association encouraged the spread of the game by demonstrating how it could be used to keep football players fit out of season. That explains why some of the sport's rules are similar to those found in football.