Now you have picked your team, how do you follow them? You could decide to quit your job, sell your house, pack your bags and go and live in your chosen city. This is ever so slightly impractical for most of us though! We have to make do with following from a far. However, this is no barrier once you find your way. As you are reading this blog, you won’t need any encouragement to use the Internet.

We have the joys of IHF.info and eurohandball.com to provide all the information we need, and much more besides. Real time scoreboards. Endless supplies of stats. All the latest news stories from around Europe and beyond. Official sites of the national federations and domestic leagues, and streaming services.

Eurohandball.com is an excellent resource for results and match reports in regards to European competitions i.e EHF Champions League, EHF European League and the EHF European Cup. Anyway, these two sites cover most of the bases for general up-to-date handball knowledge. From here, you need to find more information about your own team. First things first, bookmark your team’s official national federation site. Depending on the team you follow; bookmark their official website (if applicable) if not, follow all of their social accounts. The vast majority of teams have a social media presence. Then have a trawl via Google and see if there’s any local media which cover the team – this will obviously be in the native language of the team you follow, but can easily be read by translating the page and staying informed. It sounds silly, but it brings you a bit closer to the team and makes you feel more like a genuine fan, rather than some outsider looking in from afar. Once you’ve got all the background information in place, it’s time to focus on the matches. Firstly, handball doesn’t have a major TV presence in the United Kingdom. The chances are you will have to stream the matches of your team. ehfTV is the go to place to watch elite European club competitions. As for domestic leagues. Some provide live matches on YouTube, some provide their own subscription service, whilst others sadly aren’t viewable in the United Kingdom. This is why, when you decide on a team to follow; make sure you’re able to watch their matches, and that the league is accessible in the United Kingdom.

Anyway, that gives you a brief idea of what life is like as a British fan. Despite the time zone difference, you can still enjoy every up and down over the course of the season, just like anyone else. And of course, throughout all of this you can start planning trips to the city where your team plays to really be part of the experience.

Okay, so you know I like handball, but which team do I support?

This brings me to the first aspect of looking at Handball from a “British Perspective”. As a newcomer to the sport, you initially want to watch any game you possibly can. The teams are fairly irrelevant, partly because you simply want to watch the game, and partly because you don’t have much of a clue about which team is which anyway.

After a while, you reach a point where you decide to either just continue paddling in the handball pool, or throw yourself into the deep end and start to follow a team. The trouble is, how do you decide which one?My general supporting philosophy is that you should support your local team. That doesn’t really work when it comes to picking a handball team. So what should you do?

Well you could be boring and pick one of the big teams who are always playing in the EHF Champions League or you could pick a team from one of the top five leagues in the sport. You could decide to base the decision purely on style terms (i.e. which team has the best jerseys, logo etc!). Finally you could just decide to follow the home team from your first game.

However you decide which team to support, and whatever team you end up with, making this choice plunges you even deeper into a love affair with handball. It isn’t until you start caring about a team’s fortunes that you really get a sense of what handball is all about. Of course, it isn’t the same as supporting your local football team. Following a team playing in a different time zone via the internet is a very different experience. That experience will be the subject of my next post, along with me revealing which team I decided to support.

Well, here it goes! My first foray into the world of blogging. The idea of this blog is to create a space where I can write about handball. Handball has found a large place in my heart. I started watching in 2018, and I was hooked from the start.

So, this is the Handball Centre. Whilst I’m a fan of over five years and counting, I’m not an expert on the game, by any stretch of the imagination! However what I lack in knowledge I will hopefully make up for with my enthusiasm. I read a fair amount of different handball sites and I often find that I take a slightly different view on things from normal.

This blog should provide a bit of a contrast to other sites. Every now and then you may come across a post that you find informative. More likely my ramblings will make you laugh (sometimes with me, sometimes at me!). I’m looking forward to posting through the remainder of the 2022/23 season and beyond.