Laois players in Ireland men’s squads for 2026 FIBA Masters Open
Portlaoise Panthers Greg Dunne with Ballyroan Bluestars' Rody McEvoy take their place in the M50 team
BOTH Portlaoise Panthers and Ballyroan Bluestars basketball clubs will be represented on various Ireland men’s squads heading out to the inaugural FIBA Masters Open which takes place in Greece from 4 to 12 July.
While Panthers player, Gediminas Simkus will line out with the Ireland M45 squad, his clubmate Greg Dunne, together with Ballyroan player, Rody McEvoy take their place in the M50 team.
What’s more, Dunne’s brother Anthony has also been handed a late call-up to the Ireland M60 panel and is now set to earn his first international caps at this tournament, which will be staged across the Attica and Corinth regions close to Athens.
Originally from Lithuania, Simkus will be representing Ireland for the very first time and is excited about that prospect.
“For me, this is amazing” he told the “I'm 21 years in Ireland, with two kids now, and everyone playing basketball. This is a big achievement for me and for my family,” he remarked.
The Ireland M45 team will face off against tough group opposition from the likes of Australia, Argentina and Greece, and Simkus is hoping they can make a strong run in the competition.
“It’s very hard to say how we’ll do,” admitted the Ireland shooting guard. “We do have good players, who have a very good relationship and who support each other.
“It is a big step up from playing in Midlands and coming to this level, but I am excited,” he added.
Both Greg Dunne and Rody McEvoy will be hoping they can help the Ireland M50 squad build on their 14th place finish at the FIMBA Maxibasketball World Championships in Ticino, Switzerland last summer.
They also face a tough group campaign in Greece that will see them go up against teams representing Italy and Spain, along with an Australian outfit that edged Ireland by a solitary point in Switzerland has year.
And while he fully appreciates the level of competition they will be going up again at the Masters Open, Dunne insists the quality is there in the Ireland squad to deliver some big results.
“We're in against quality opposition and even then on the other side of the draw, they're all decent teams. There's certainly no slouchers,” stressed Dunne.
“But we're after putting in a savage amount of work, and I'd hate for us to go out and not do ourselves justice.
“The lads have put in a huge effort. We've been training in St Aiden's in Dublin, we've trained in Portlaoise, we've trained in Cork, we've trained in Belfast. We even went to Nottingham for a warm-up tournament there in May and we beat Team GB, who are going to this and would been seen as high up on the list of possible winners.
“We have a very good team going out. We're far more mobile than we were and we're bigger than we were.
“We've gotten in two serious players in Damien Sealy and Stephen McGuirk. They were proper Irish senior internationals, and were playing at the highest level in the country.
“We have Rody McEvoy who is a real ball handler, whereas before, we only had somebody that was a shooting guard. He is interested in getting me on the scoreboard and he's into feeding the ball around, so that brings a different element into the whole team as well.
“And then we have already brought in just an actual shooting guard in Bernard Walsh. We didn't have Rick Leonard, the American, for the World Championships last year. He was injured, but he's back now as well and has gotten into shape, so he's a big addition,” he insisted.
Former Portlaoise Panthers player, McEvoy is now representing Ballyroan and is relishing the opportunity to pick his first caps for Ireland.
“I’m looking forward to it now,” he said. “It'd be the first year I'd be eligible for the 50s because I just turned 50 this year. I wasn't eligible for the previous ones, so I said I’d give it a go and I made the 12, and so we’re off to Greece now.
“It’s going to be tough. The Australian team is fairly good and there's an Italian team that’s fairly strong, I can only imagine that, at international level, no team is going to be too simple anyway,” he remarked.
While McEvoy is poised to make his international debut, he has settled very well into the national panel, telling the “Basketball Ireland is a small enough scene, so everybody probably knew each other, maybe not personally, but knew of the other players.
“I certainly would have known a lot of the guys who are on this panel, ex-Super League players and ex-Irish internationals. You’d have known their names for years, but the weekend that we had at that tournament in Nottingham was very good in helping us get to know each other more,” he added.
Like Simkus and McEvoy, Anthony Dunne is gearing up for his first international in an Ireland bib, having been handed a late call-up to the national M60 panel to replace Northstar’s Todd Gfeller, who picked up an untimely injury in the lead-up to the tournament.
The team will face off against Puerto Rico, Italy, Mexico and Australia in their pool phase, hoping to secure a strong finish ahead of the classification games.
While admitting Ireland will get nothing easy in Greece, Dunne is excited about the potential of the team, insisting “On our day, if we get it right, we're capable of doing it.
“We really have gelled together and we have a very good squad. We have the likes of Ed Randolph and Jerome Westbrooks, ex-Super league players, so there’s a lot of experience between them.
“We have four or five players who are over 6’5” and we’ll need them, because, in fairness, some of the other teams will have serious players.
“The likes of the Puerto Rico, Mexico, Australia teams, they're not going to travel just for the sake of it. They’re going to be very competitive, but we’re looking forward to it,” he said.
