When Squash Ireland caught up with Sam Buckley for an interview just before Christmas, it was clear his uncharacteristic malfunction in the 2025 Irish Senior Nationals final was still a major sore point.
He was cruising to what would have been his fourth successive title, just three points away from a comfortable 3-0 victory over Sutton clubmate Conor Moran when things inexplicably fell apart. “A pretty big learning curve,” he reflected 10 months after the dramatic collapse left him beaten 3-2.
Despite it being a calendar year where he became the first Irishman to break into the PSA top 100 in more than a decade, doing so without being the reigning national champion certainly stung, but the upside was that this lingering pain ultimately spurred him on to a classy 2026 title success.
So polished was Buckley across his four-match title run this past weekend at the Fitzwilliam in Dublin that he only gave up a miserly total of 52 points. All the more impressive in this quartet of 3-0 victories was how he limited arch-rival Moran to just 13 of those points in Sunday’s one-sided final.
That was three points less than the 16 that Aaron Knox, the No.9, and Oisin Logan, the No.5, each managed in their respective quarter-final and semi-final ties against the No.1.
It was clinical title-match squash at its very best, and Buckley wasn’t shy in the aftermath to volunteer how a recent social media clip highlighting Moran’s winning points in last year’s decider only further fuelled his resolve to make amends and win back the title.
“It means the world to me, really,” he told Squash Ireland after the packed Fitzwilliam court one had cleared out with the trophy presentation completed followed his compelling 11-9, 11-2, 11-2 triumph.
“Leaving here empty-handed last year was probably one of the lowest points I’ve ever had in a squash court. To be two-love, 8-4 up and managing to find a way to lose, it’s tough.
“I’ve spent many days, probably every day to be honest, since last year thinking about how I’m going to right that wrong and then it’s kind of funny, I was only saying to someone the other day, it feels like every day for the last three weeks when I open up Instagram there’s a video of that rally from two-love, 8-4.
“It just kept giving me these little reminders of, ‘I’m not going to make the same mistake again’, so I’m glad that I put the wrongs right.”
At the heart of Buckley’s 2026 final win was his first-game surge, an acceleration that left no one watching in any doubt he was very much up for his showpiece decider. “The first game was pivotal, really,” he said.
“I actually started quite slow in the first game; I think I was three-love down in the first, it was kind of ebb and flow through the first game, and I was very happy to get over the line in the first game. I really feel that he [Moran] was pushing hard in the first game, and I think it was a big game for the outcome of the match.”
His game one momentum put him on course for a comfortable victory, but was there a fleeting flashback in the third that he was now in the exact same cruising situation as last year? There was.
“I remember a brief moment at two-love and I think I was six-one up; I just remember thinking, ‘Just play it one point at a time’. I had a pretty clear game plan that I stuck to for the whole thing; I actually didn’t really go away from it at all.
“Maybe in the first game at the start, I wasn’t quite doing what I should have been doing. But once I got into a flow of it then and settled down, I felt like I was doing the right stuff.”
The calibre of Buckley’s convincing success emphasised how much better a player he now is 12 months on from his bruising runner-up finish.
“To be honest, I feel like I’m a different player, probably playing a slightly different brand of squash as well, moving the ball around a bit more, hoping that I’m a bit less predictable. Definitely a bit fitter and yeah playing with a bit more confidence.”
Kudos to Rob Owen, his mentor, for that. “Mainly, I’ve been getting coaching with Rob Owen in Birmingham; he’s kind of been leading me in the right direction every day since I started there in September.
“He got me in the right headspace today, gave me a clear game plan, so I knew exactly what I was doing and yeah, stuck to it. It paid off.”
Buckley came into the Nationals ranked No.105 on the PSA chart and a super foundation has now been laid for him to go on and surpass his career-best ranking of 95 in the months ahead.
“It means the world for me to be the national champion again, but I know it’s just like the start of hopefully for this second half of the season of bigger ambitions, more of things that I want to tick off, keep moving up the rankings and yeah, just win some more tournaments hopefully.”
