Kieran Shannon: 'My body kept looking back at me as if to say ‘Are you sure?!’ - Fergal O'Sullivan
WATCHING FROM THE BLEACHERS: Fergal O'Sullivan will be watching on from the bleachers as he retires from basketball. Pic: ©INPHO/James Crombie
It’ll be a bit different down in the Complex on Saturday nights this season. Without Fergal O’Sullivan, for Fergal O’Sullivan, because of Fergal O’Sullivan.
A lot of Americans and Eastern Europeans have passed through Tralee and Tralee has been through a lot of Americans and Eastern Europeans since the town’s proud national league tradition was revived with the advent of the Warriors seven years ago now.
Trae. Goran. Dusan. Jordan. Jumper. Jackson. Jokic. Calixte. Brunson. Price. Niko. Andre. Dre.
At some point they were all adopted as one of the town’s own only at some other point to move or be moved on, typical of how transient relationships and careers in professional basketball tend to be.
Even the local cast changed through the years.
The Warriors’ first season in the league Ryan Leonard was there only to head to the States thereafter, while Eoin ‘Quigs’ Quigley was playing in Limerick only to return thereafter.
Two years ago Darren ‘Butters’ O’Sullivan, captain of the Superleague-winning team of 2019, finally finished up. Even Darragh ‘Skinny’ O’Hanlon missed last season through injury.
Although the winning and the drama seemed to always remain the same, only two players remained a constant: Kieran ‘Star’ Donaghy, 40 last season, still scrapping for every loose ball and rebound, and Fergal O’Sullivan, bombing away from “Down-town” as a certain commentator and former Tralee winning coach might say.
Now O’Sullivan has hit his last dagger three for the Warriors. He’s joining his cousin Butters in retirement, whatever about in the bleachers. Only that mad dog Donaghy remains of the original St Brendan’s crew that won the intermediate National Cup in ’16 and provided the nucleus for a Tralee Warriors team to incredibly enter and compete in the Superleague in 2017.
“It’s just time,” says O’Sullivan, who will turn 37 in December. “At the end of last season I had a bit of a repair job by having keyhole surgery on my hip. So over the summer I was getting back up my fitness but it was like my body kept looking back at me as if to say ‘Are you sure?!’
“And then there’s the fact we have younger fellas either coming through, or in the case of [the aforementioned] Ryan [Leonard] and Cian [O’Sullivan], coming back. I’d always said that when there was new talent coming along I wouldn’t want to be in their way, so it’s time to let them get out there.”
Of course it’ll be tough not being out there this Saturday night, almost as tough as it would have been on his body were he suiting up against Moycullen.
In his seven years playing in the Superleague, he never got to play with two Americans on the same team at the same time. This season a new regulation allows for it. Fifteen years ago he passed on playing Superleague, believing two Americans per team would negatively impact his game. (“I’d seen enough guys from Tralee sitting on the bench for 40 minutes,” he once said of declining to play with the then Tralee Tigers). Now he believes the reintroduction of two Americans would have enhanced it. Less game-time maybe but more shots. For a gunner nicknamed Chuck Senior by teammates for his propensity to shoot away, it would have been a dream.
“I’d love to experience that. I think it would have suited my game as a spot-up shooter. If I was on the floor with two Americans and say Ryan [Leonard] or Quigs or Jako [Daniel Jokubaitis], I’m the guy they [opposition] are going to cheat off. So with less attention on me, that would create more kickbacks and open looks for me.
“I think allowing two Americans play together at the same time is for the betterment of the league. It’s going to hurt some Irish players, or at least their court-time, but overall it’s going to raise the entertainment value and ultimately the standard of the league and Irish players as a whole. It’s a move that had to be made. I’m a fan of it.” He saw other changes during his time in the league. With Covid the league returned to a conference system that cut down the number of games teams had on the road. Conor Meaney in these pages yesterday outlined how the current conferences are a bit lop-sided, with the southern division Tralee are landed in considerably stronger than its northern equivalent, but O’Sullivan sees its merit. Ask him if a Superleague season – which starts this weekend and could go on until April for teams with barely a weekend off – is a grind, and he shakes his head. It is a delight.
“I loved it, the week-in, week-out nature of it. The conferences helped in that you didn’t have as many away trips, or as long away trips, as you’d have had in the old days. You could play in Cork or Galway and still be home at a reasonable hour.
“Now, I still prefer the old system that whoever finishes top of the league are Superleague champions, as opposed to having playoffs and two conferences. There’s some sort of happy medium to find there but overall the conference system has been a massive help, especially as you get older. It has prolonged careers, certainly mine.”
He’s seen other changes through the years. In the years between the Tigers dropping out of the league and the Warriors entering it, the title seemed to always come down to the same two or three teams: usually Demons or Killester with UL Eagles making their way into the mix to win a couple of leagues in 2012 and 2013. But once the Warriors came into the league and Jason Killeen moved to Templeogue there seemed to be a power shift. Those two clubs would win their share of trophies but so would others. It became more open, democratic, anybody’s.
“The whole competitiveness of the league has risen. A few years ago you could put your finger on two or three teams and say ‘It’s between them.’ Whereas the past few years there’s six or seven teams you could see going all the way. Anybody can beat anybody.”
He found that out the hard way last year. After winning the double in 2021-22, bringing their trophy haul to five in as many years, Tralee didn’t even make the playoffs last season, failing to clinch one of the four spots going in the south.
But yet the Complex still had big crowds for every game, was a sellout for the playoff decider against Neptune. Just as the team never gave up on clinching that last spot, the Tralee public didn’t give up on the Warriors. A generation of kids now knows nothing else but basketball on Saturday nights in the Complex, just, to O’Sullivan’s glee at the expense of an old teammate, some of them don’t even know Kieran Donaghy used to play for Kerry. They know Star primarily as a player and the Complex as the place to be on a Saturday night.
It’ll still be buzzing this upcoming one. O’Sullivan will help see to that. As chairperson of St Brendan’s, one of the local clubs that is a feeder to the Warriors, he’s on the Warriors organising committee. And this season he has been given a particular task on matchday. During the intervals for quarters and at halftime which has now been extended to 15 minutes upon the Warriors’ request, he will assist MC Alan Cantwell on rolling out the match-day entertainment.
“We’re just looking to up it, like everything else. On top of the halfcourt shot challenge we’d usually have and kids playing games, we’re looking at all kinds of things like you’d see in the NBA.”
So have your babies ready for a crawling race. And don’t be surprised if some Saturday night he wrangles his way into the halfcourt challenge himself and Cantwell gets to proclaim “Fergal for three!” one more time.
Like he did there so many times.
