Unbeaten in the 2018-19 season in all competitions. Alone atop the SuperLeague table. Hugely excited to contest today’s Hula Hoops National Cup Final: Liffey Celtics are having a moment. It's remarkable just
how quickly this basketball club - which is still in its teenage years and has claimed the last two SuperLeague titles - has emerged as a true powerhouse of Irish basketball.
There’s just one major piece of silverware missing from their trophy cabinet: the Paudie O’Connor Cup. All that stands in their way is Brunell of Cork, another team looking for their first cup final win.
Speaking this week at the National Basketball Arena, Liffey Celtics captain Ailbhe O’Connor and teammate Shauna Homan seemed incredibly relaxed ahead of this season-defining game. They also seemed quietly determined to avoid a rerun of their last Cup final appearance two years ago, when Glanmire swept them aside by 13 points to win their fourth cup in a row.
Irish basketball has traditionally rotated on a Dublin-Cork axis so it’s fascinating to see a club from the heart of the Leinster commuter belt emerge so powerfully and so quickly. Founded in 2003, Liffey Celtics have, like so many other Irish basketball success stories, built their foundation around family and community.
“There’s ten of us on the team and five or six of us are coaching underage in the club,” O'Connor says. O’Connor’s sister Aine coached the Liffey Celtics’ U-18 ladies team to victory in Saturday’s U-18 Cu final and was coaching the U-20s in the semifinal. The only members of the Liffey Celtics team who won the 2011 SuperLeague Cup who aren’t also in the current team are their two Americans and Sorcha Tiernan and Niamh Masterson, who were playing U14 back then.
It’s a sign of the love of the game and hunger for success at the club. It starts with the ‘dribblers’ group of five and six-year-olds, runs through their booming academy and into Leixlip’s secondary school Colaiste Chiaráin, and now is manifesting itself in SuperLeauge trophies and Cup finals.
“Success breeds success,” O’Connor says.
Liffey seem perfectly positioned for today’s final. At the semifinal stage two weeks ago in Cork, they disposed of DCU Mercy, reigning National Cup champions and the team who bounced them from last year’s Cup, with relative ease, winning by 20 points. They also dispatched Brunell by 16 points when the teams met in the SuperLeague back in October. But the occasion of a National Cup final - when the TV camera are rolling and everyone stands for the national anthem - is something different entirely.
“We try to keep it as normal as possible while respecting the occasion,” O’Connor says “If you treat it as just a normal game and come out for the final, and the lights go down, and your name gets called, you could be in trouble. It happened to me two years ago. Complete and utter shock. I hope the experience of two years ago and the two league finals we’ve had since will stand to us.”
To explain their scorching run through the league and cup this season, O’Connor and Homan singled out coach Mark Byrne’s intensive preseason training sessions, the influence of mentor Mary Bowler and the family spirit that unites the club
“My mom’s the club secretary and team manager,” O’Connor says, “and we were just saying the other day, if we knew all the work that was involved, would we have done it?”
“Well thank god you did,” Homan says.
All that work will feel worth it Sunday should Liffey Celtics extend their unbeaten season by one more game.
Whoever wins, there’ll be a new name on the Paudie O’Connor Cup, and that’s a good thing for Irish women’s basketball.
