nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Child Item

What Happened Basketball In Ireland

JONJO THE MISER

Just after watching a great docu on Rte called we got game about basketball in Ireland in 1980's and 90's and how popular the game was.
I remember when RTE used to show basketball games on a Friday and Saturday night, so what happened?

Find more posts tagged with

Quick Links

Comments

dd972

All the construction worked dried up for those 7ft tall Lithuanians

Wacker The Attacker

a load of me hoop(s)

moneyman

Multiple reasons, but probably the most damaging was the decision to limit the amount of Americans each team could have.

jill_valentine

Just watched it there now. It was like archive footage from a parallel universe, I had no idea or awareness or any of this world.

Al Capwned

I remember a womens team from my town (Castledermot) won the National Championship around '88 or so. Was huuuuge at the time, but it's where my knowledge of basketball ends.

MadYaker

Its a sh!te sport anyway.

Karl Stein

MadYaker wrote: »

Its a sh!te sport anyway.

Here we go...

Davdee1

White paddies can't jump!!!!

TouchingVirus

These people might know...

My name is URL

Davdee1 wrote: »

White paddies can't jump!!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Burke

oppenheimer1

There must be some way we can blame the GAA for its demise?:rolleyes:

Mickey H

It's an interesting question. Honest answer, I don't know. We played alot of it in school, but since then, it seems to have slipped under the radar.

It's probably still very popular, but just no TV coverage.

moneyman

MadYaker wrote: »

Its a sh!te sport anyway.

Spoken like a true insecure GAA man!

padd b1975

Ahhh yes...

Team Harp from Ballina with the McHale brothers, Kevin McStay's brother Paul and Dunkin' Deora Marsh.

osarusan

The only name I can remember is Jerome Westbrook.

MadYaker

moneyman wrote: »

Spoken like a true insecure GAA man!

Im about as far as you can get from a GAA fan.

darced

This post has been deleted.

Boom__Boom

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

There must be some way we can blame the GAA for its demise?:rolleyes:

Really doubt it given how stong it was and still is in Kerry.

jill_valentine

moneyman wrote: »

Multiple reasons, but probably the most damaging was the decision to limit the amount of Americans each team could have.

That was the show's clear conclusion alright.

Very sad though, the energy of the games and the mania of the crowds in the old footage was crazy, it's mad to think it just evaporated so completely.

I mean, I was born in 1985, and that all looked like another universe to my eyes. If it wasn't for all the Premier Milk and Calor Gas signs (and the occasional set of pasty legs) it might as well have been a different country altogether.

weldon

For anyone not lucky enough to catch it on TV:

http://www.rte.ie/player/ie/show/10197093/

jill_valentine

Honestly, do check it out if you missed it, it's the best thing I've seen on RTE in donkey's years.

numorouno

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h0qBsQ34jSc

a blast from the past for the main commentator. Timmy the legend

catbear

I was caught up in the 80s craze, went to the summer camp in Dungarvan, went to the tournaments in Inchacore etc. I think a lot of it was demographic, there were loads of young people and the GAA and other incumbent sports couldn't handle the swell.

Plus Ireland was opening up and people had a hunger for more international sports. The NBA was a sporting spectacle whereas the pre premier league soccer looked dull, date and old fashioned in comparison.

I went to a traditional hurling school and while Basketball was played outside school hours there were students told to stop playing basketball or they'd be dropped from the school hurling team.

Naturally this caused a standoff and it made basketball the rebel sport and hurling conformist. It had been taken for granted that GAA had supremacy, school games times were used as practice sessions for the good players while everyone else was used as hurley fodder.

That was another big draw for basketball, it was easier to referee and if you were assaulted the offender would get an unambiguous ban. In hurling the good players tended to be spared official retribution, a three week ban meant nothing if the next game wasn't for a month.

Another thing that parents loved was that it was mostly an indoor game, I know my parents were glad not to have to stand on the sideline of a stormy wet windy pitch half way up a mountain in the middle of nowhere.

Basketball clubs weren't as territorial as GAA. It was more your school or which side of town you came from. If a time was getting too small it was no hassle to split up and join other teams etc. Bureaucracy was minimal.

In the end other sports learned form Basketball and that big demographic wedge of young people wanting to hang out in a friendly fun sport passed went off to work, college, parenthood etc.
http://tfw.cachefly.net/snm/images/nm/pyramids/ei-1990.png

I played my last full game about three years ago but a cracked rib taking forever to heal finished my career. To me it was always about fun. I remember my GAA raised father being slow to warm to the more sportsmanly basketball atmosphere, he'd talk about traveling to hurling games as a young lad in armed gangs hoping for a fight!

osarusan

There was a show called irish basketball monthly on setanta last year. Don't know if it's still on.

Episodes on youtube too, from the user basketballireland.

First episode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ABfFjPXNRk

keeponhurling

Does every sport have to be popular in every country ?

Gyalist

Good times. On my first day in Ireland I was walking across O'Connell bridge and 3 teenaged girls shouted, "Jerome, Jerome" and mimicked dribbling a basketball. I didn't realise the significance of this until I met Jerome Westbrooks a few months later. They'd obviously mistaken me for him even though, as I pointed out to him at the time, I was considerably younger.

Looking back now it seems incredible how popular basketball was in the 80s even though there was very little in the way of infrastructure for it. I remember huge crowds packing into venues like the Oblates Hall in Inchicore and the IWA Hall in Clontarf. If that happened today the Health and Safety people would shut the place down.

cormie

Never played it growing up other than having a net stuck to the back of my house, there wasn't room to even attempt a dribble. We did it in school maybe one PE class a year, I loved it but all the 90% of the class we're complaining and wanted to go out to the field to kick a ball, the rest of the class being non sporty didn't care either way and we never got a proper game and didn't know the proper rules.

Got into it 3 summer's ago after befriending a Lithuanian and have become addicted since. Brilliant sport. Really involving, exciting, challenging and intense. Play at least 5 days out of 7 every week now in different pick up games around Dublin and Wicklow, all overflowing with players from all over the globe.

yermandan

Cormie,

Other than Mountjoy Square, where else in Dublin are there games?

Duck's hoop

Still hugely popular within the Latvian/Estonian/Lithuanian and Phillipino communities.

Also leagues going strong, coverage on rte wireless for big games.

NBA in Tallaght could do with a spruce but it still gets lots of use.

TommiesTank

Davdee1 wrote: »

White paddies can't jump!!!!

That's alright, at least most can swim.