Reopening a city’s basketball diaries

YOU could call it one of the great White Coat scenarios in all of sport.

Back in 1992, if someone had told you that 20 years later, that not only would Liverpool still be awaiting their next league title but that the powerhouse of Irish basketball, Neptune, would still not have secured their fifth senior National Cup title, well, you’d have asked for them to be escorted away by the proverbial men in white.

Although Graeme Souness had clearly made a botched job of rebuilding a team, that spring his side were on a run that would take them all the way up the Wembley steps that May, back when the FA Cup was the FA Cup. United had yet to secure their first league title in quarter of a century and while Fergie’s team-building project was clearly a couple of years ahead of his fellow Scot’s, it was a lot easier to envisage Liverpool winning another league title within the following five years than go 20 years without what Shankly used term their bread and butter.