Kieran Donaghy called up to Irish basketball team

Well, Joe Brolly, what do you... ack, no.

At 34 years of age, Kieran Donaghy is going strong. The Austin Stacks man has already committed to another season with the Kingdom and, now, he has international basketball to prepare for. Before the national football league started, Donnchadh Walsh told RTÉ Sport that Star and Colm Cooper were going to be back in Kerry jerseys in 2017.

"They’re definitely back as far as I can see," Walsh said at the time. "You don’t like that uncertainty so it is a good boost, yeah."

For the start of the year though, Donaghy has been on the court with Garvey's Tralee Warriors and his performances were of such a standard that he has been named in a 20-man Ireland panel. Ireland's new basketball head coach, Pete Strickland, confirmed the line-up of the select 20 players that have been called into the national team to train in April. The Irish are preparing for the FIBA European Championships for Small Countries in 2018 but will have a friendly tournament this summer which would take Donaghy and the team off to an unconfirmed location. Kerry will kickstart their championship campaign in the Munster semi-final against either Limerick or Clare on the weekend of June 10. It remains to see whether there will be any fixture clashes with the basketball and football but this the Kerry native's first call-up to the Irish senior men's team having played at underage level for his country in the past. The full squad list is as follows: Adrian O'Sullivan (UCC Demons) Cian Sullivan (La Salle University) Ciaran O'Sullivan (UCC Demons) Ciaran Roe (Pyrobel Killester) Colin O'Reilly (UCC Demons) Conor Meany (UCD Marian) Daniel James (UCD Marian) Eoghain Kiernan (Pyrobel Killester) Issac Westbrooks (Griffith Swords Thunder) Jason Killeen (Templeogue) John Carroll (University of Hartford) Jordan Blount (University of Illinois) Keelan Cairns (Belfast Star) Kieran Donaghy (Garvey’s Tralee Warriors) Lorcan Murphy (Templeogue) Neil Randolph (Templeogue) Paul Dick (most recently Fuenlabrada, Madrid) Paul Freeman (SSE Airtricity Moycullen) Roy Downey (UCC Demons) Ryan Leonard (Garvey’s Tralee Warriors)