Kieran Shannon: State failing another golden generation

All through last summer, while the indefatigable Mark Tighe kept breaking stories highlighting the scale of the incompetence and mismanagement of the FAI, there was another weekly occurrence in another sport.

Virtually every weekend, each of our national basketball teams, from U16 to senior, male and female, would either meet up to train or were away in Europe somewhere for a week or so, competing against the rest of the continent.