Kieran Shannon: Irish basketball gets back on Europe's big stage
Gráinne Dwyer is the lone survivor from Ireland’s last Eurobasket qualifying campaign in 2008-09. Picture: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
It was supposed to be only Michelle’s last time in green in the Arena, not everyone else’s too.
Twelve years ago Irish women’s basketball seemed on the verge of something special and winning promotion to the European A division. They had beaten Slovenia and Switzerland both home and away in their group. They’d only lost by three points to a Montenegro team that would win its first five games at the following Eurobasket championships, including a shock win over eventual champions France. Beat Iceland away and the Netherlands at home in their final leg of games and Ireland were into the playoffs and the big league.
They ultimately fell short. Ireland slipped up in Reykjavik, meaning even before their visit to Dublin, the Netherlands had edged Ireland for second spot in the six-team group.
That game in the Arena was no dead-rubber though. With Michelle Aspell, the most dynamic guard and leading scorer in the domestic league that entire decade, having declared in advance that it would be her final game for Ireland, the National Basketball Arena was packed and emotionally-charged, as both she and the home support inspired Ireland to a magnificent 67-62 win.
Afterwards Aspell, who scored 18 points that night, and head coach Mark Scannell each spoke about how it was a great way to sign off her international career and also the bright future the team had with stellar talents such as Michelle Fahy, Niamh Dywer and Lindsay Peat in or approaching their prime. They’d only missed out on promotion by a point. Stick together and they’d likely make the breakthrough in the next campaign.
Only there wasn’t a next campaign for them. It turned out that autumn of 2009 Irish basketball wasn’t so much on the cusp of its brightest hour but its darkest. As has been well documented here and elsewhere, the national governing body was found to be over €1million in debt and one of its ways to cut costs was to cut their national team programmes.
It was another seven years before Ireland’s senior national teams returned to international play, by which time several players like Peat had gravitated to rugby to have the honour of wearing green again. And even then, with half of its debt still remaining, Basketball Ireland did not feel on secure enough footing to return to full European competition. Instead it opted to take the baby step, or the stepping stone, that was the European Championships for Small Countries, a week-long tournament played every second summer among nations of that descript.
The competition seemed to shape as much as reflect the standard of Ireland’s play. In 2016 both the women’s and men’s team medalled but neither was gold. In 2018 the women finished a highly-disappointing sixth in an eight-team tournament played on their own home patch of Cork.
That autumn though James Weldon was appointed head coach, and in last July’s subsequent Small Countries championships in Cyprus, his team impressed en route to finishing runners-up to Luxembourg, a nation that Ireland used to routinely finish well ahead of prior to 2009 but have placed higher than us ever since. In August the men’s team, under Mark Keenan, emphatically won gold at the small countries tournament hosted in Dublin. The performance of both squads emboldened Basketball Ireland enough to decide its senior national teams were competent enough again to take its place among the nations of world and re-enter full European competition for the first time in 12 years.
It’s a significant step up for the women, financially and every other way. Instead of a week-long tournament played during the summer, this campaign will involve home-and-away games in three different windows staggered over 18 months, though thanks to the generous backing of the US-based benefactor John Fitzpatrick of Gotham Drywall, the Irish players won’t have to raise a cent, a rare luxury for any Irish international.
The competition is also much stiffer, even from what it was in 2009. Back then you had an A Division and a B Division, almost like a senior and intermediate GAA championship, with Ireland competing at the top end of the latter. But now basketball runs its European adult qualification competitions much like soccer does. A Spain – a superpower in both sports – could be in the same group as a Finland. When you step up and stop playing in the Small Countries, you’re going to be playing some of the big countries, or at least some of the big powers.
That’s certainly the case for Weldon’s squad who are naturally the fourth seeds in their four-team Eurobasket qualification group, given the country hasn’t played remotely at this level in a dozen years (a FIBA power ranking had Ireland 35th of the 38 teams competing in these Eurobasket qualifiers).
The top seeds are Belarus, a team that finished fourth at the last Eurobasket.
The Czech Republic, who’ll visit the National Basketball Arena next Sunday, also made it to Eurobasket 2021.
The Netherlands just missed out on points difference on qualifying for the same tournament. Three of their starting five play in Spain, the best domestic league in Europe. While Irish basketball rightly took great energy and confidence from the current senior team quartet of Melia, Finn, Tiernan and Huijsdens winning U18 and U20 medals at the European B level in recent years, the core of the current Dutch team won an U20 bronze medal at the European A level in 2018. While Ireland haven’t hopped a ball at the top level since Aspell’s – and Fahy’s and Peat’s – last international game 12 years ago, the Dutch are well acclimatised to this temperature.
And yet there is nowhere else Irelands wants and needs to be. Yesterday the team went into camp for the week, bolstered by the addition of Maura Fitzpatrick, an American-born player currently starring in the English league, and the return of Anna Kelly. On Wednesday they will fly out to Amsterdam and on Thursday at 5.30pm they will square off against the Dutch, believing they could win, and knowing they will compete and scrap every inch of the way.
There’s a certain poignancy that our first opponents back at this level are the same as it when we played last. And all the more so that there is one survivor from that qualifying campaign of 2008-09. At 36 Gráinne Dwyer is still diving after every loose ball going, and next Sunday evening she will stand in the National Basketball Arena and face the same flag that her sister faced the last time Aspell suited up in green. TG4 will be there to capture that moment, just as they will for when the men’s team commence their pre-qualifying campaign with a home game against Austria on November 28.
It may not quite have the allure of Ronaldo or the All Blacks coming to town, but the return of European senior international basketball to Dublin this weekend will trigger its share of goosebumps and even the odd tear. For decades we took it for granted, an Irish senior national basketball team, playing in the National Basketball Arena. After the last dozen years, we’ll never take it for granted again.
