Panthers to draw on strong home support for National Cup opener against St Paul’s

Basketball Ireland Men’s Division 1 BOWES Auto Centre Portlaoise Panthers have been handed a home tie against SPK Utility Trust St Paul’s for the opening round of the 2026/27 Domino’s Men’s Division One National Cup on Saturday, November 7.

The Laois side are hopeful that work will be completed on the floor of their home court in St Mary’s Hall in time for that fixture, something that Panthers head coach Ciaran Kiveney views as a huge advantage for his players.

“Having the home draw is fantastic,” he told the Laois Nationalist. “We should have St Mary’s back by then and I think we’ll even play Malahide there before that.

“Playing in St Mary’s, it’s almost like having a sixth player on the court with you. And as well as that, it’s great that we don’t have to travel.

“St Paul’s is probably one of the furthest journeys you have to make and heading all the way to Killarney is not something you want to be doing for a cup weekend, so we’re delighted we don’t have to do that,” he said.

The Portlaoise boss is, nevertheless, expecting a strong challenge from their Kerry rivals, who made it as far as the last eight of the cup last season, where they came undone against Templeogue, the same team that beat them by ten points in the opening week of this season’s National League.

St Paul’s did also go one step better than Portlaoise in last season’s Division One campaign by reaching the quarter-final stages, where they were beaten by Drogheda Wolves, so Kiveney is certainly not taking next month’s cup test lightly.

“I think the draw with St Paul’s is one of the better ones for us because, size-wise, I think we match up well.

“They’re a very good team and they always are, but it’s probably early days to know how they’re going to play or how they’re going to do.

“They recruit well and they always have a core of Irish players who are there every year and who keep them going very well.

“They lost last weekend against Templeogue, but it’s very hard to judge anything off the first weekend of the season.

“We’ll be watching all the St Paul’s games with a closer eye now because we have to see where their strengths are and where the weaknesses are.

“We won't do any actual training preparation until the week before, but we'll be looking at it, seeing where we think we'll be able to close them down defensively and then expose them offensively. It will be a tough game, but size-wise, we think we have a better match-up,” he said.

Certainly, Portlaoise will be hoping for better fortune in this cup opener than they had in this very fixture last season when they welcomed Limerick Sport Eagles to St Mary’s back in November.

Not only did they suffer an early exit at the hands of Limerick following an 83-71 defeat, but worse still, they lost talisman Rich Ashu to a season-ending injury after he tore his patella tendon in the third quarter.

That early cup exit and the loss of Ashu marked a turning point in the season for Panthers, who, up until then, had won all of their opening six league games but ended the season just missing out on the play-off quarter-finals.

And what made it all the more difficult to take was the fact that they had been hoping to build on a tremendous run the previous season when they had not only made it all the way to the National League decider but also the cup final, losing out to Limerick Celtics on both counts.

Kiveney is now hoping they can build on the promise of that 2024/25 campaign, and victory over St Paul’s in front of strong home support next month will go some way towards helping them in that endeavour.