Merry Monks break bread

HOLDING COURT The Merry Monk bench watch on during Saturday night’s Superleague game against UCC Demons in Ballina.  
Pic: Keith Heneghan/Phocus

Merry Monks break bread

Agreement has been reached in the Ballina basketball club

BASKETBALL
Daniel Carey

THE Ballina basketball team will play their remaining games in this season’s Superleague – but the club’s long-term future remains unclear. The Mayo News understands that a deal has been done within the club which will ensure that Team Merry Monk do not withdraw from the competition prematurely, but it remains to be seen whether the club will be in the top flight next season.
“We have the players to finish out the season and the committee are going to look after the bills,” club chairman Pádraig Moore told The Mayo News. “But personally, I don’t see us playing Superleague next year if conditions don’t change.”
A rift within the Ballina club became public ten days ago when a group of players played a Superleague game in Belfast against the wishes of the club committee, who withdrew from the fixture in protest at the content of a Basketball Ireland press release on their situation. Moore said that the national governing body’s refusal to accept the committee’s decision in relation to the Belfast game meant that ‘the club have been left in an impossible situation by Basketball Ireland’. However, he added, ‘we’ve managed to sort out things locally on the ground to make sure that the Superleague commitments are fulfilled this year’.
Members of the club’s Division One team have agreed to represent the Superleague side, while club officers will taken care of the club’s debt. Moore says that ‘no public bodies or local people are unpaid’, but confirmed that the club’s long-term future is still ‘up in the air’. There seems little prospect of any outside funding in the short term, and for Moore, what Basketball Ireland have suggested is too little, too late.
“We’ve had no contact from Basketball Ireland, apart from … an offer that if we put a proposal together and in writing, that they’ll call a meeting and take a look at it, and depending on the result of that, they may look for a meeting with the club. That would probably take six weeks and the season will be all over, so that type of help is no good,” he said.
Part of the internal deal has seen Puff Summers and Eryk Thomas, two Americans who were released by the club last week, in action for the Superleague team. Both played their part against UCC Demons at the Ballina Sports and Leisure Centre on Saturday night, with Thomas hitting 39 points and Summers scoring 24. The evergreen Liam McHale weighed in with eight points, a tally matched by his fellow veteran Deora Marsh. Paul Barrett and Shane O’Meara grabbed four points apiece, with Darragh McGarrity landing two and Brian O’Malley also seeing some game time.
But despite a valiant effort by Merry Monk in the early stages, a two-minute spell towards the end of the second period allowed Demons to open up a ten-point lead, and the home side were never able to eat into the gap. It was 58-46 in the southerners’ favour at half time, and UCC eventually won 106-89.