Neptune build a new golden generation for basketball
Is the question unfair?
Perhaps, but the person posing it isn’t the one who’s going to suffer, so the query stands.
Neptune, one of Cork’s great basketball clubs, journey north this weekend for national cup competition at U18, U20, and senior level. The question’s a simple one — how strong are the links between the current crop of players, at all levels, with those who featured in the glory years of the 80s?
“I’ll end up leaving people out here...” says Neptune senior coach Paul Kelleher, with the air of a man who can see tomorrow’s arguments.
“Ah, you can see the links. You look through our U18 team especially and you can see it.” Kelleher begins: “There’s Cian and Adam Heaphy, whose father Ger played in the 80s — Adam is on the U20 squad.
“Scott and James Hannigan, their dad is Jim Hannigan, who played, while Darragh and Conor O’Sullivan’s dad is Tom O’Sullivan. Ciaran Fitzgerald’s dad is Kieran Fitzgerald — people who were there in the 80s would remember them, obviously.
“Adam Drummond’s brother Craig is an international. Sean Jenkins is Anthony Jenkins’ son — and his mother is Angelene Myers, who also played basketball back then as well, of course.” And Kelleher himself?
“Yeah, my father Tom and my cousin Roger (Kelleher), they all played in the 80s.”
Exhaustively — and exhaustingly — mythologised, the 80s were a high water mark for basketball in Ireland, and Cork in particular. The danger with any golden age is that subsequent generations can feel second-best.
If you think the 80s sides cast a shadow so long the current generation feels left in the dark, however, Kelleher makes a valid point about the essential differences between the game then and the game now.
“I grew up watching the game in the 80s, it’s part of our basketball history and it’s part of what makes the game so popular.
“Comparing the games then and now can lead to an interesting debate. Clearly the players back then knew how to play the game, as they do now. But I think we probably have better athletes and quicker players now, and when you look at certain things — the shot clock back then was 30 seconds, and now it’s 24, so the game is completely different now.
“It’s a different game in one respect, then, though other things are very different.” Some of those differences are easily quantifiable. Take the physical limits of the playing area, for instance, which don’t pose the same obstacles to today’s players that they did to their fathers.
“We’d share a joke every now and again that when we were kids of 13 or 14 you were cool if you could ‘board-top’ it, if you could touch the bottom of the board,” says Kelleher.
“Now we have kids of 15 or 16 who are dunking the ball. And dunking it easily.
“Someone like Cian Heaphy or Liam Chandler or Darragh O’Sullivan, when you can see what they’re able to do with the ball — up and unders and reverse layups, all of that. It’s a completely different animal you’re talking about.
“These debates are healthy but it’s important to recognise what we have now compared to what we had then.”
Part of that is casting the net a little wider — what Kelleher calls the “eclectic group of skill sets” among his players: “We have newcomers as well, obviously. It’s hugely important to bring in players from different backgrounds — take Dave Murray, who’s come from a rugby background, and you can see it in him when he’s playing.
“It’s hugely important to have an eclectic group of skill sets, because if you go down the one route you lose focus a little — you don’t see what you could potentially have.”
Having teams in three national cup finals across three different age groups is a good sign for the future, surely?
“We’re optimistic,” says Kelleher.
“The one thing that I always say is that underage success isn’t a guarantee of senior success. I was fortunate enough to get my first senior coaching gig at 29 — when I went in, I tried to implement what I’d been doing with U17s, but it doesn’t necessarily translate.
“It’s a learning process and mistakes are going to be made, there are processes people sometimes don’t like, but those are inevitable — if you understand that, it makes the process easier.
“Otherwise you get frustration, which can hamper progress. One thing we have to understand is that we can’t run away with ourselves and whatever potential success we may achieve based on what happened in the past.
“Whatever happens this weekend, it’s still going to take time.”
It always did.
