Aidan O’Shea is already a bit of a hero around EJ Sligo All-Stars.
The Mayo GAA legend made his full debut with the Division One basketball club on Saturday and he helped inspire the west coast outfit to victory over the previously undefeated Ulster Elks.
96-89 was the final score as the Sligo men made it four wins from four but, suddenly, their entire season has been transformed.
Head coach, Shane O’Meara, admits that they went in at the start of the campaign looking at fixtures to see where they could steal points. When they lost three of their opening four clashes, it seemed like it was going to be a struggle but the All-Stars are unbeaten since and they’ve a nice President’s Cup win under their belts too.
Aidan O’Shea was a big part of their success story this weekend.
The Breaffy native skipped a trip to Abu Dhabi to line out for his new basketball club in his first home game and he sure as hell made the most of the time spent back home on the court.
His basketball coach says they were crying out for a man like Aidan O’Shea.
“He scored seven last night, a few steals, and I don’t know how many rebounds – I’d say it was about 10 rebounds,” O’Meara told SportsJOE.
“He’s a power forward – and power is the operative word.
“He’s really given us something that we needed in terms of physicality because the lads wouldn’t be as physically mature yet. We struggled to protect the point, we didn’t have a presence in there but now just the fact that he’s there, he makes people think twice about going to the basket.
“He has great hands and he actually has a much higher basketball IQ than I would’ve expected from someone of limited experience, with the fact that he hasn’t played for so long. But, Jesus, he’s a great passer of the ball, he just has an instinct.
“A lot of the skills are transferable anyway and a lot of the movement would be transferable – off the ball. He understands the game and he loves the game.”
He loves it so much that he’s been putting in extra hours of practice, staying behind after training to hone his skills.
He’s not pissing around with the basketball – Aidan O’Shea doesn’t piss around with anything. He’s a born winner.
O’Meara sees his latest addition’s practice paying off already. Not that he expected any extra from him.
“He would’ve been quite rusty but, one of the nights, we trained for two hours and he stayed behind an extra hour and put up a load of shots – a couple of hundred shots. I’d say it paid off for him on Saturday night, he made a couple of big free-throws and, when we went down by a point, he made a huge free-throw to level the game and put us back on the front foot,” the coach said.
“When he made those, it’s a bonus because I wouldn’t have been expecting a huge amount other than physicality and rebounds but then I think he might’ve had the first two baskets of the game.
“He’s loving it. He should’ve been in Abu Dhabi this weekend with the GAA All-Stars but he gave that up and came out for us instead.
“He’s a great addition. There’s no ego with him. It’s very easy to pull the rest of the lads into line if *he* doesn’t have an ego.
“Even with the kids at the club – they’re all looking for selfies and coming up to him before we train and he’s just very giving with his time. He’s inundated. Like, he got seven points last night – Kaylim (Noel) got 35 and Oisin (O’Reilly) got 24 but there must’ve been 40 kids waiting for Aidan O’Shea after the game for a photograph.”
Now, it’s the usual tussle that every talented sportsperson feels. O’Shea is a star for one of the best Gaelic football sides in the country but he’s a massive presence now for the basketballers in Sligo too. Everyone will want him to stay with them forever.
“He was saying he’d love to keep going if he can,” O’Meara revealed. “I’d love to have him for the rest of the campaign.
“Himself and Ronan McGarrity together are a huge bonus. Ronan would be a more polished, experienced player but having the two of them together is fairly daunting for teams. The two of them are great – just so competitive. They’ll kill you to win a game.
“I’d be hoping Stephen Rochford would look at what Kieran Donaghy’s doing and just say ‘fire away’. He’s happy to play for as long as he can anyway.”
O’Meara points to the example of men like Kerry legends Pat O’Shea and Donaghy and Michéal Quirke as GAA men who just automatically switched to basketball mode as the seasons dictated. He points to Dermot Early and Kevin Walsh and Liam McHale and he can see a raft of further GAA stars joining them in the future.
Right now though, he’s protecting his own club’s future.
10 years ago, Sligo All-Stars stripped everything back and pulled their senior team. They worked solely from under-6s to under-20s and O’Meara is constantly praising the likes of Glen Monaghan and Fergal Kelly for their influence in the club’s development.
It paid dividends what they did all those years ago. They won an under-16 All-Ireland back in 2013, they have over 50 under-8s running around the place too and their senior team is now comprised of those young guns that they’re bleeding themselves – and they’re club men.
One of them, yes, is another GAA star – Sligo’s teenage prospect, Cian Lally (pictured above with Kaylim Noel).
“We have two 17-year-olds in the starting five and Cian Lally who’s on the Sligo senior football team only just turned 19 last weekend,” O’Meara said. “At one stage, we had two 17-year-olds and an 18-year-old in the starting five which is awfully young.
“Six of them were on the squad that won an All-Ireland under-16 title three years ago. That was a huge thing for us because we would never have been eating from the top table – traditionally, we would’ve been in the B division and competing well there.
“That was massive. That’s the makings of the senior team now so we’re kind of waiting for them to come of age as such.”
They’re getting there. Their 4-3 record in the league has been the product of a surge in form and they head to take on Dublin Lions in the capital next week in the President’s Cup full of confidence.
“The boys have settled in and they’re fearless now, it’s great, there’s a bit of a swagger about them. As long as they don’t get carried away – they’re only young fellas and getting the consistency is the hardest part.
“There’s a lad there, Oisin O’Reilly, and he’s averaging 23 points a game or something – at 17. It’s phenomenal. He’s one of the top scorers in the league at the moment. He’s on the Irish under-18 squad for the European Championships next summer. He has great pedigree.”
It sounds like this club has great pedigree. This isn’t the last we’ll hear of Aidan O’Shea the basketball player. It’s certainly not the last we’ll hear of EJ Sligo All-Stars.
Dick Clerkin makes his GAA Hour debut to talk about a wonderful career and argue passionately with Colm Parkinson over Sky Sports GAA. Subscribe here on iTunes.
