UPWARDLYThe MOBILE
Ballincollig man Ronan O’Sullivan is making a big name for himself as a coach with Saigon Heat in Vietnam
RONAN O’SULLIVAN had been back in Cork for more than three weeks, but he never felt more at home than at the Mardyke on Friday night when his Cork Emporium side came out on the right side of a local Leeside derby against UCC Demons.
After three years away from Ireland, he had returned last month. It had been an eventful period. Throughout a global pandemic, O’Sullivan was stuck on the other side of the world in a country that had completely sealed its borders.
Like many people though, he discovered something about himself in that time. O’Sullivan had left Cork as a fairly decent basketball player, good enough to represent Ireland at every level from Under15 to senior and to have played professionally in England. He comes home as a young coach of immense promise, whose reputation is blossoming in south-east Asia.
This shouldn’t be a surprise. Coaching is in O’Sullivan’s blood. The Cork Emporium side that he is part of are coached by his father Kieran. His cousins are also part of the roster. Spreading the basketball gospel is in their DNA.
But it wasn’t basketball that brought him to Vietnam. O’Sullivan worked for a Cork tech company, Vsource, and was relocating for a year in Saigon, following a good friend who already lived in the city.
He heard good things about it and the lively expat community in Vietnam’s second largest city.
‘And everything I have been told about the country is true, the people are very friendly, it is a very family-orientated society. Very like Ireland, actually,’ he says.
He came home to Cork last month as the assistant coach to Saigon Heat in the VBA (the Vietnamese basketball league). Not just that, but he was part of a coaching team that had just led the Heat to the title in devastating fashion, meaning they are entered into the Asian championship next spring.
The Heat had lost just a single regular season game and went through the play-offs unbeaten. They did this while conceding an average of only 69 points per game.
‘Yeah, we are very proud of that defensive record,’ he says at one point. While he’s at home, O’Sullivan is lining out for Emporium Cork in the Insuremyvan.ie Superleague. And that’s why he was in the Mardyke on Friday.
But maybe Kieran will be picking his son’s brains for some tips on what worked with the Saigon Heat this year.
It could probably be called serendipity that he got involved with the Heat. Matt Van Pelt was an
American basketball player who had impressed during a stint in the Superleague here and was now coaching in Vietnam.
O’Sullivan knew him from sharing the Irish courts together and he was asked to come down and help out with a few sessions. From there, a relationship with the players and other coaching staff grew. ‘I knew
Matt from his time in Ireland and he just asked me to come down and help out with him. This was just before Covid kicking off actually.
‘We built up a good relationship and it just grew from there, really,’ O’Sullivan remembers.
‘During the pandemic, Vietnam closed its borders entirely so there was no way out. I couldn’t go home if I wanted to, but working with the Heat helped me through it at that time.
‘And Matt could see that I hadn’t just built a good relationship with him, but I had with the players too.
‘I got a good response from the team. They saw my personality and my passion for the game, the strong love I have for it, and it led to me being offered an opportunity with Saigon Heat.’
The opportunity was as a full-time basketball coach, one of six in the backroom team for the growing VBA, which hopes to capitalise on basketball being the fastestgrowing sport in Vietnam.
It only came into existence six years ago and lost two of its seasons to the pandemic, but the sense is that the VBA can grow into one of the country’s most significant sports leagues.
Vietnam is a country of 70 million people with a rapidly-expanding economy. And the younger generation seem to enjoy their basketball. Every one of the Heat’s games this season was a sell-out.
The NBA is second only to the Premier League in the most recognised sports brand in the country, and that will only grow further as Johnny Juzang became the first Vietnamese player to be drafted in the NBA when he joined the Utah Jazz earlier this year.
And Mark Tatum, the NBA’s deputy commissioner, is half-Vietnamese and was actually born in the country – in the city of Vung Tau.
With that sort of backdrop, it’s hardly a surprise that the VBA has hit the ground running. ‘There are 70 million people in the country and basketball is the secondhighest participation sport. It is really taking off, especially as they just have their first NBA player.
‘The talent is there in the country, and people want to come and watch the games,’ O’Sullivan said.
VBA teams are allowed three Americans on their roster – as opposed to the one American allowed in the Superleague – and
The borders were closed, but working with the Heat helped me through it
the effect of that is clear on the court. ‘The standard is quite high and the game is fast-paced because every team is allowed three Americans. In Ireland, they are only allowed one.
‘And it is the Americans that the people want to come and see. They are like the rock stars and all of them have been NCAA Division one players,’ O’Sullivan explains.
He was working in a fully-professional set-up in the Saigon Heat. Along with the five other coaches and 15 players on the roster, they were all full-time.
‘It meant that we were practising twice a day, five days a week. We were doing a lot of video analysis in the morning, poring over games and practice. It was a real learning experience,’ he says.
There’s only one Vietnamese native in a coaching team that includes an Englishman, two Americans, a Canadian and an Australian.
‘There is a real international feel to the coaching set-up, and that has helped because we are all bringing our own influences.’
While the Ballincollig native will be doing his utmost to help Emporium Cork in this year’s Superleague, he will be expected back in Saigon next year, ahead of the Heat entering the Asian Championship in March.
It will be another step on what has been a surreal coaching journey – and one that is unlikely to end any time soon.