Other Sports

Short History of Basketball in Kerry

February 24th, 2015
by Weeshie Fogarty

 After football basketball has always been my second favourite sport, soccer  and athletics are also very high on my list and while a passionate lover of hurling when growing up in Killarney we were never fortunate enough to see an adequate amount of this magnificent game to become hugely attached and appreciative of it.
 
Killarney won its one and only Kerry senior hurling county championship in 1969 and this was the closest I have ever been exposed to in relation to memorable hurling days. Rugby was also on the periphery of my sporting young life and while I was always a follower of Killarney rugby teams and played a few games as a youngster we were tainted in a big way in our youth in relation to the oval ball due to the infamous foreign ban.
 
Unbelieveable now as it seems, and shame on those who enforced it on us but if you played or attended a soccer or rugby game in my youth and you're your mortal sin discovered; you were immediately banned for a period of time from playing Gaelic games.  Many the Sunday afternoon in the sixties in the company of boyhood friends we were forced to watch Killarney rugby teams playing their Munster and Kerry opponents from the Flesk bridge on the Muckross Road. The bridge overlooked the so called cricket field, so by not entering the grounds you were deemed safe and uncontaminated by this "terrible foreign game"?
 
But basketball despite the fact that it was also a foreign game was ok to play because it originated in America and not in "enemy" England. It was first played in Kerry in the late forties and Caherceiveen FCA won the inarguable county championship I think in 1949. Jimmy Coffey, a great friend and former postman here in Killarney was a member of that historic winning squad. There was a magnificent team photograph in the very front page of this paper the week following the final. The game took the county by storm and it was also had a massive influence on football in the county as it helped keep players, club and county fit and alert during the long winter months.
 
Intercounty stars and All ireland winners such as Jerome o Shea, Niall Sheehy, Tadghie Lyne , Johnny Culloty Jackie Lyne, John C Cooper, and many more due massive crowds as they fought out the local town and county championships.
 
The game here in the Kingdom has produced some of the greatest stars this country has ever seen and so it was last Monday evening on my award winning Radio Kerry program e Terrace Talk I had the privilege of having in studio as my guests four great Kerry basketball men, American Rick Leonard, his son Ryan (both Tralee residents) together with Stephen and Garry Fernane.
 
 And it was the latter name, Gary Fernane that for me revived wonderful memories of sporting days and nights long since lost. Garry's grand father also Garry Fernane was in many peoples opinion and I include myself in this, one of the top five greatest basketball players ever to come out of this county. And there has many.
 
Garry's career is a stunning catalogue of magnificent achievements. I had the privilege of playing with him in 1959 as Cork beat us in Cork in the Munster minor basketball final. He was also on the Kerry senior team that same night but the selectors would not allow him to finish the minor game so he would be fresh for the seniors. He left the court with tem minutes to go and Cork pipped us by two points.
 
Garry was sheer class, tall and graceful in his movements he captained the Irish team at the Catholic Student Games in Belgium in 1959, then post war Europe. He was the star as Ireland took on Spain. Portugal, Germany, France and Austria. Gerry Kelleher (Killarney Brian Corkery (Killorglin) and the great Charlie (Chang) o Hanlon (Tralee) were also on that Irish team.
 
He declined the offer of a scholarship to Idaho. I would imagine it seemed a bit far from home at the time as he was a real home bird. In the late fifties he had the unique honor of captaining the Irish junior and senior teams in Liverpool against England. Amazing accolade for one week end. He had also captained Ireland at under eighteen level, remarkable achievement as Belfast, Cork and Dublin were dominating affairs around this time.

On his return from England in 1972 he coached a star studded Kerry team to Munster and All Ireland honors and some of the legends of the game here in Kerry came under his wing. Paudie o Connor of Killarney, another one of my top five greatest Kerry players once told me that Garry's coaching played a huge part in his progression and was one of the finest men he had ever worked under. Others to benefit from his expertise included the Burrows brothers, Seanie and Buddy, Tim Regan, Mervin Griffin, John Dowd (RIP, Jimmy Diggins and many more.
 
Three generations of "Garry Fernanes" have represented Kerry in basketball from the fifties to the present day. His son Garry played National League with Tralee Garveys and his afore mentioned grand son also Garry recently won a National Cup u-18 medal with Fr Matthews of Cork. Ryan Leonard was also on that winning side with Garry junior. What an amazing legacy and what an uplifting and magnificent Kerry sporting story. 
 
Garry Fernane died suddenly thirty years ago this very year, on February 3rd 1985, aged just 44 years of age; He was married to Noreen (nee Brosnan) from Strand Road. He had four children: Helen, Garry, Stephen and Margaret. His son Garry took after him in basketball playing with Tralee Garveys in the late 1980s.
 
A staunch Austin Stacks man he loved The Rock more than anything in the world and won a juvenile hurling medal with them in the 1950s. He was also a selector for a time with the minor and senior football teams in the late 1970s - and, he coached the Stacks to a Div2 basketball title (also in the 1970s).
 
 If and when a list of Kerrys greatest ever sporting heroes is compiled in my opinion the name Garry Fernane the basketball player will be high up there with Mick o Connell, Mick o Dwyer, Mick Galway, Tom o Riordan, Paddy Downey, Jim Culloty, Paul Griffin, Gillian o Sullivan, Maureen Harrington, John Lenihan, John Griffin and many more too numerous to mention here. Because that is the legacy Garry Fernane has left. My memories of him as a team mate are of a quite, courteous, polite and wonderfully talented young man. He died far too young.


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