As both a player and coach, Mark Keenan has been at the heart of Irish basketball over the past quarter of a century. Tomorrow he coaches a SuperLeague selection to face a British All-Star side — just recognition for one of Ireland’s foremost coaches in any sport.

IT’S hard to know which is the more rash, to make predictions or resolutions at this time of year, but invariably we all end up indulging in some crystal-ball gazing about the 12 months ahead. Just what has 2013 in store?

A month or so before the London Olympics, Billy Walsh travelled down to the Garda Training College in Templemore for a coaching course with a difference.

You’d hardly have noticed but there’s no William Hill Irish Sports Book of the Year award this winter.

When you think of him you instantly think of him smiling, his head and body tilted back in his chair, either sharing a joke with his old partner George Hook or maybe even having one at Hook’s expense.

So, they resisted cutting down on the hand-passing of football.

Felix Jones has faced a series of serious injuries that would have made most young players question the wisdom of trying to make a career at the highest level.

Sometimes, you’d think that Roman Abramovich bought Coventry that time and not Chelsea.

If there’s one Irish sports autobiography this year that every sports coach in the country should read, then it is Lar Corbett’s All In My Head.

It’s been quite a year in the life of Barry Solan, one which has brought him all around the world and occasionally the top of it too.