Blue Demons Shane Coughlan to be inducted into Basketball Ireland's Hall of Fame

Shane Coughlan of Blue Demons BC fittingly becomes the first Irish men’s player to enter the BI Hall of Fame having played most of his career in this millennium.

Coughlan was the standout backcourt Super League player of his generation, contesting a record 10 Super League Cup finals from his rookie season as a teenager in 1998-99 to his last in 2014-2015 when he captained Demons to an astonishing treble; to this day that Demons side remain the only top-tier men’s team to go an entire season unbeaten in all competitions.

Over the course of that 17-year Super League career, he won six of those cup finals, a record only his teammate and friend Niall O’Reilly has matched, while averaging 14 points per final victory.

He is the only player to ever win back-to-back men’s Cup final MVPs; in both the 2003 and 2004 deciders, against Belfast Star and Neptune respectively, he clinched the cup for the famed Cork club by scoring the game-winning basket on his way to hitting 18 points.

Combine that with three Super League titles (2005, 2009 and 2015) and delivering each of the first three Champions Trophies (2013 when he was MVP, 2014 and 2015) to Sunday’s Well, and he trails only Neptune’s Tom O’Sullivan and Brendan O’Flaherty as the most decorated player in men’s national league history.

It isn’t so much what he won though as how he won and competed that made Coughlan the most revered local player in Demons history. 

Hailing from a family steeped in the game – his late father Peter won national league titles as a player and a coach – he was a stylist as well as ferocious competitor and leader. 

He was an exceptional ball-handler and passer, while unusually for an Irish guard could score both from the outside and with his back to the basket.

All this was flagged from an early age. He won back-to-back MVPs in the prestigious Billy Kelly U17 tournament, followed by appearances in two consecutive U19 National Cup finals, the first (1997) of which Demons won. 

Yet such early promise was trumped by his exceptional longevity; years after that treble-winning 2015 season with Demons, he would lace them up again to help the club to a couple of intermediate National Cups (2017 and 2018).

He remains a stalwart and ambassador of Demons, helping out in their underage section and regularly and passionately supporting their Superleague team, most of whom grew up watching and idolising him.

Ken Black, Jerome Westbrooks, and Michelle Fahy will also be inducted into Basketball Ireland's Hall of Fame in 2026. 

The quartet will formally take their place as the 23rd, 24th, 25th and 26th members of the prestigious hall at the Basketball Ireland Annual Awards ceremony on Saturday, May 23rd at The Osprey Hotel in Naas.