Frustration for basketballers as season may be wiped out

GALWAY’S five national league sides have all but resigned themselves to the 2020/21 national season being scrapped in its entirety, and they have expressed frustration and disappointment that the elite sport status they were initially granted was soon rescinded, unlike the teams that compete nationally in soccer, rugby, and GAA.

Basketball Ireland was the first sporting body to call an immediate cessation of activities back in March: even before the country went into its first lockdown that month, the game’s governing authority had announced that the matches scheduled for the weekend of Sunday, March 15 were postponed.

It later announced an end to the 2019/20 season, which was close to completion anyway – both regular women’s season had been completed, while there were one and three rounds remaining in the Men’s Super League and Division One respectively.

Details of a somewhat pared-back 2020/21 season were announced in July, but that never got off the ground and not a single competitive basketball game at any level has been played since that March shutdown, with Basketball Ireland announcing last month that the league season had been suspended, but the hope was that the national cup competitions would go ahead.

Now, giving the level of Covid-19 figures in the country, especially since Christmas, local clubs are admitting that even that small glimmer of hope for a return to the courts before the summer is unlikely.

“I don’t see a return to basketball until March/April at the earliest,” says NUIG Mystics head coach, Paul O’Brien.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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