Castleisland primed for more mayhem and magic

Only Eamonn Egan gets to sample the quiet before the storm of the Castleisland Basketball blitz, which tips off its 44th year on Thursday.

Before more than 1500 players and the hundreds of games noisily spread themselves out over five days, Egan arrives in the pre-dawn blackness of St Stephen’s Day to turn the front door key and open up the Community Centre to court kings and jesters.

The door to a unique set of Christmas dreams and treasured memories.

“The gym would heave with the size of the crowd,” says Tralee’s Mike Quirke, who still cherishes his memories of the event, like most through-and-through basketballers. “People were literally hanging out of upstairs balconies, windows, rafters, anywhere to catch a glimpse. The first time I stepped into the Community Centre, I fell in love with it. It wasn’t that the players were any different or that the prize for winning was spectacular, but the atmosphere was one of the best I have ever played in. For Premier games, the crowd would just swell so much that the sidelines disappeared and were marked by spectators. If the ball hit a spectator, it was out of bounds. Simple.”

Eamonn Egan gets to see night and day at the Blitz, from the solitude of 7am to the nightly clean up at 10 o’clock.

“You’d be checking the lighting first thing, setting up the chairs, making sure the toilets are okay, stocking the shop. Time doesn’t be long going, and Porter’s usually here by eight,” he says.

‘Porter’ is Denny, another Blitz veteran without whom the event’s quartz precision would unravel. He’s secretary, Egan vice-chair. Maurice Casey has proved a can-do, will-do chairman because that’s what the position demands. There are no heavyweight PR machines or corporate sponsorships picking up the slack. Beneath them, Donal ‘Duke’ O’Connor provides the safety net for this high-wire effort, a tournament director without peer.

“Duke is above in [the tournament’s overspill venue] St John’s Hall today, getting the music system ready and singing with all the songs. He’s at it 44 years now. This is the time of year he comes alive,” Egan says.

“But we’re all willing conscripts. My young fella was born the year I started, so that’s 25 years at this stage. And what happens is the kids of Blitz veterans are competing now. It’s a never-ending circle.”

That is a key element to its longevity. Surrounding parishes like Cordal, Scartaglen, Currow and Ballymac wade into the madness that Mike Quirke refers to.

“Some of the best players that have played in this country have graced that gym,” the ex-Kerry footballer adds, “and still talk about it today. The atmosphere is different to any other gym in Ireland. It’s an atmosphere created by the people who organise and support the event, great people who make life-long memories for all who take part.”

Where else would basketball junkies want to be at Christmas? The surprise is that basketball Ireland hasn’t cleared its holiday schedules for the game’s most engaging carnival.

“Castleisland remains the best post-80s spectator experience I’ve had in Irish basketball,” says Kieran Shannon, author of Hanging from the Rafters and co-producer of the TV documentary on Irish basketball, We Got Game.

“In the ’80’s, national league basketball was new to Castleisland, so the whole novelty of that experience along with the traditional fervour of local competition created this atmosphere that made one feel you had stepped foot into one of those fabled high school barns in Indiana immortalised in Hoosiers,” he says. A special time in a special place.

For Eamonn Egan and the red shirts of the St Mary’s club committee, priorities are not always so prosaic. “When we’re sweeping up at night, we’d always have a quick review of the day, problems and issues. Duke would always have a few stories, though half of them would be lies.”

By 9am every day, the centre is ready for a new set of dreams, as the tournament — if not the venue — has been every Christmas since 1970. Forty-four years ago, they used the Astor Ballroom in the town by day for the basketball and by night for the dancing. The centre has evolved too since it was first used for holiday hoops back in 1976. Frequently, the committee sailed close to the wind with health and safety, but no one was turned away on finals night as cars snaked up Church Street on one side and out the Scartaglen road.

“Every night we played there, it was in front of a packed house,” recalls Liam MacHale of Ballina, one of the country’s most talented home-grown basketballers. “There was always a minimum of a thousand people there, which was probably 500 more than should have been allowed in. Honestly, it was one of the best experiences of our basketball lives. I remember they had a free bar set up too in one of the upstairs rooms. It was their VIP area and you could have anything as long as it was Carling Black Label.”

The annual programme for the tournament is a work of substance in itself, 140 pages of teams, thoughts and ads for hardware, hair and local hotels.

Its printer is one of the key tournament supporters, alongside Munster Joinery, Garvey’s and Den Joe’s, a fast food legend itself.

Mark Scannell says of Neptune: “I remember one year we got snowed in and Neptune were there for two or three days. Ordinarily that would be a problem — but not when you can pop down to Den Joes, meet a few of the lads from Tralee or Listowel or Dublin or Limerick. Or when you have the likes of the Duke organising an extra night’s accommodation for you.”

It’s a template for how local industry can work, with the support of proud neighbours in Kerry.

“One year I was coaching Killarney in the National League and we had a few injuries over Christmas. I thought we should give Castleisland a skip,” recalls Jim Nugent, “but I was quickly over-ruled by the Killarney lads. They thought the Blitz was too important, too prestigious to miss.”

Those human-chain sidelines that Quirke speaks of have been sanitised somewhat by an impressive extension of the Community Centre, but the sense of organised mayhem remains. Thankfully.

“Once with Demons,” says Scannell, “Anthony Jenkins went over on his ankle down in Castleisland and missed the Cup finals. But you never want to miss it because it’s unique — from U8s to National League. Where else would you get something like that?”