Reopening a city’s basketball diaries
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.
If anything though, Neptune’s famine is even more incredible. This month 20 years ago, in a jammed Neptune Stadium, they hosed their local rivals North Monastery in the cup final. It was Neptune’s seventh time in eight years reaching the cup final and their fourth time skipping away with the cup. They were eyeing their eight league title in 10 years.
So much has changed since a beaming Terry Strickland bounced up the steps to receive another cup MVP that Sunday evening. The following year, the cup finals weekend moved to the brand-new National Basketball Arena in Tallaght where it has stayed ever since. And though Neptune would still go on to be the most successful senior club of the following 10 years, winning league titles in 1995, 1997, 2000 and 2003, they’ve since failed to add any silverware to that collection, including that fifth cup.
There are a myriad of reasons why. The tragic premature passing of Emmet Neville was to Neptune what Len Bias’s was to the Boston Celtics; in losing a franchise player-in-waiting, a generation of success was lost with it. Losing the O’Reilly brothers, Niall and Colin, to deadly rivals UCC Blue Demons deprived them of serious leadership and talent. And although the ball-handling and defensive play of the typical current Superleague Irish and indeed Neptune player is superior to his equivalent in the halcyon days of the 80s, it is remarkable a club which spawned Tom O’Sullivan, Tom Wilkinson and Paul Kelly has not produced in over a decade one pure spot-up shooter who can consistently knock down the 16-footer, let alone one from beyond the arc.
Yet still the club endures, plans and aspires. This weekend it hosts the National Cup semi-finals and with it, an electrifying head-to-head clash with old local rivals Demons.
The sport and the cup has needed the lift that only Demons versus Neptune in the Stadium can provide. Last month RTÉ announced that for the first time in 27 years, it would no longer be televising the cup finals because of cutbacks. Basketball deserved better, or at least greater notice. It was only on RTÉ’s insistence back in 2007 that basketball did away with a 20-year tradition of running the semi-finals and finals over the one weekend, and instead split them over two separate weekends to give RTÉ more time to package their final-day coverage. The cup lost a lot of its magic with that move. If Basketball Ireland had known in advance, it could have reverted to the traditional format and feel that demanded the event be televised in the first place.
For a few hours next Sunday though, there won’t be a better place in Irish sport to be than the Neptune Stadium. When the sides clashed in another semi-final two years ago in Cork to mark the 25th anniversary of the Neptune Stadium, it was like going back in time: the place jammed, watching the latest stud from the States, Juwan James following in the tradition of Strickland and Smith, going up against Demons.
Neptune’s current American, Ron Thompson, is no Smith, but he’s a useful big man. When the sides met a fortnight ago, Demons strolled to victory, 99-64. On every level they’re a superior team to Neptune.
We can see Sunday working out a lot like that game two years ago. Mark Scannell is a smart coach and will have learned an inordinate amount from December’s humiliation. Again his players will rage against their limitations. We see Demons shading it down the stretch but Neptune will take them to the stretch. Who knows, they might even take them in the stretch. It’s the cup.
