Basketball - A Theme for Movies
By Con Houlihan
In a previous incarnation, I was incarcerated in a boarding school in the lovely woodlands of East Cork.
It was there I first became acquainted with basketball. I was studying, if you don't mind, when the idea was first mooted and we were all delighted, because even though gaelic football is a great game, you get tired of it when you are playing every day.
Basketball in our school was a great success. We had a grand indoor hall, and we had fierce competition between different classes.
In our time, it was a very rough game - and if you got one score in the course of the match you were doing well.
I marvel now when I see a scoreline of 100 - 98. In my time it was more like 2-1.
I enjoyed it tremendously - I was very tall for my age, and so I had a great advantage.
Basketball was very new in Ireland then - and it wasn't organised. We played other schools, but only in "friendliness". In fact, the games were far from friendly.
I agree with Liam McHale:"In gaelic football you get harassed after you get the ball, in basketball you're harassed before you get it". Liam is one of my icons, and I must say in passing, that when he was sent off in Croke Park this year, my heart sank - and only that I was covering the game for the Sunday World, I would have gone away and watched the match in a pub.
When I escaped from the boarding school in Castlemartyr, there was little or no basketball in the free world outside.
Most of my spare time was given to playing rugby and to winking the fish from their waterbeds.
Then one day, I was at a match in Tralee, and I was approached by Eddie Griffin, well known footballer and boxer.
He told me they were forminag a basketball club in Cordal - and asked would I join.
I was flattered and delighted, but as luck would have it. I was setting out next day to take up work in London - and so after my three years in East Cork, Inever played basketball again.
Many people may not know it, but basketball is the theme of several fine American movies, and the theme of a famous short story by John Updike. Few other games have been celebrated on the screen.
I was well aware that basketball was big in America, but I didn't realise how big until Ispent a fornight in America about five years ago.
One night I went to Madison Square Garden to watch a big game. I was delighted by the athleticism and skill of the players,and I was enthralled by the passion of the crowd.
That night it dawned on me why the game is so popular in the US.The Americans are a very young people, sometimes I feel that they may never mature,and perhaps it is just as well.
Basketball is a simple game, you could take along your grandfather or granny,and in five minutes they would understand the basic rules.
Another aspect to make it appeal to the American - scores are frequent. There is action all the time - there are no slack moments.
Soccer is finding it very hard to find deep roots in the US for the very opposite reasons - scores are very few, and there are long times when it seems that nothing is happening.
The Americans are like children, they get bored easily. And that is why basketball is so big there.
I saw the Dream Team play in the Olympics in Barcelona. The forecast was that their whole campaign would be a lap of honour, but the Croats - that team drawn from a nation as small as our own - game them a mighty game.
I was there, and of course I was cheering for David - but Goliath won. The young people of my own town and the whole country are lucky that now almost everywhere, they have the a choice of three major games - and in many places,four.
In the old days, many parishes had only gaelic football or hurling. Now basketball and soccer have entered the picture. We are experiencing a cultural revolution, and I am delighted that my own heartland, Castleisland, is in the midst of it.
I follow their teams' progress mainly through the Kerryman and The Examiner, and I am very well informed.
Alas, I haven't seen a game down at home for ages, I am more often in Paris than in Castleisland.
But don't worry - I'll threaten to come back.
Con Houlihan wrote this articele for the Christmas Blitz Program of 1996