Liffey Celtics call Brunell bluff and profit from distance

Seconds gone and Sorcha Tiernan sent the net aswish with a three-pointer.

No-one could have known it then, but the game’s entire narrative had just been captured in one exquisite flick of the 5’ 8” guard’s wrists. Tiernan would land five more from the distance. Her Liffey Celtics teammates would pile on another nine.

If it wasn’t Tiernan, it was Karen Mealy. Or Allie LeClaire. Their shot percentage from three-point throws would stand at 65% by the night’s end. That’s a ridiculous figure when most sides would happily cash in around the two-fifths mark.

“I’m just looking at the percentages there and they didn’t miss much,” said Brunell coach Tim O’Halloran. “We put in the game plan. Normally up here, in the Arena, it’s tough to shoot for threes, but they were nearly 70% from threes and that kind of blew us out of it.”

Brunell had set up with a zonal defence designed to make the paint a valley of the damned. They dared their opponents to let loose, but Liffey Celtics had spotted the same tactic in the Cork side’s defeat of Fr Matthews in the semi-final and called their bluff.

The Leinster side’s scoring potential wasn’t limited to the outer perimeter. Florida native Briana Green was joint-top scorer, with Tiernan, on 22 and did much of her damage with a deft touch and physical leg work closer to the basket.

Try as Brunell might, they couldn’t prevent the deficit from stretching: six at the end of the first quarter, it leaped out to 20 by half-time and peaked for a spell at 22 before a third-quarter surge from Brunell as they raged against the dying of the light.

Within 13 at one point, thanks in no small part to American guard Tricia Byrne, they were at a delicate point where everything had to click. It didn’t, couldn’t, and Liffey Celtics aren’t 10-0 in the Super League for nothing.

They would give adversity the most limited of welcomes.

“The score is probably a little bit flattering,” said Liffey coach Mark Byrne. “Brunell made a great run at us in the third quarter and if we hadn’t weathered that particular storm it would have been a much tighter affair. So I feel a bit bad for Brunell because they really put it up to us.

“They have a huge amount of talent on their team but I’m really delighted with the character shown by our team. Talent is one thing, but in a tough game when the opposition really puts it up to you it’s that character that you need. That third quarter was really tough.”

Maybe the most remarkable aspect to it all was the fact that the winners leaned on just seven members of their 10-strong panel for most of this game. Then again, even the late arrivals slotted in without fuss when their turns arrived.

Young Niamh Masterson never troubled the rim when landing a two-pointer within seconds of her entrance. Shauna Homan made straight for Byrne, who had most of her 21-point haul claimed by then, after she made her escape from the bench.

Everyone with a role performed it to a tee. For Brunell there appeared to be no chinks in their armour.

“It’s just demoralising when you are putting in so much effort and there is still 14-15 between them,” said O’Halloran. “Look, it was our first time here. I would hope it inspires them to want to come back again and win it. We don’t want to lose, but to move on and take positives from it.”

O’Halloran, speaking to this newspaper prior to the final, had made the point that it wouldn’t be OK to lose this one merely because it happened to be their first, but Byrne felt experience played its part.

This was Liffey Celtics’ fourth final of some hue in the past two seasons and Byrne never got the sense that his players were flustered by it. Not when it came to media, tickets, the crowd or any of the other minor oddities that can waylay the best prepared.

No-one encapsulated that more perfectly than Tiernan. Her dead-eye accuracy and spooky sense of calm as she drained that first three-pointer — another followed moments later — wasn’t all that surprising given her central role on this court when the Ireland U18s claimed a silver at the FIBA European Championships.

Young Player of the Year in the Women’s Super League last season, she added an MVP award last night as her club, not much more than a decade on from its formation, claimed its first Hula Hoops Paudie O’Connor National Cup title. Don’t bet on it being their last.

“I don’t remember ever feeling like this,” she said. “Obviously we had some great wins here in the U18 Euros, but to do this with my home club, to do something we have wanted to do for so long... and after the girls lost here in the final two years ago, it’s just amazing.

“It’s kind of indescribable. I have been playing with the club since I was seven, so 12 years, and to bring home the cup like this is amazing — and on the back of the U18s winning their cup yesterday as well. Two cups in two days, I don’t know how to describe it.”