DIARY
DIARY
30/06/03
I forgot to mention yesterday that I've updated the Club Links page, with the addition of a link to Westside (Founders' Cup Winners) and to Stockport Lapwings (WNBL).
Also, a correction to my commentary on the Rules revision. The jump-ball is now only to be used at the start of each half (not each quarter) and of any extra period(s). Thanks to John Stow for spotting my error and pointing it out.
29/06/03
Sorry about the delay in this week's diary entry - not only did the bookshelves take longer to finish than I expected (including a crick in my neck from painting the underside of the shelves!), but I also got waylaid by the publication of the fifth "Harry Potter" book, which has taken me a week to read.
Anyway, that's all done now, so I really should be able to keep up to date with the few snippets that are filtering through at the moment ... and get back to the "History" files.
Received an e-mail last week from Founders' Cup winners Westside, informing me that they are from Shepherd's Bush (in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham), not from Chiswick as we'd stated. I've amended the Founders' Cup Roll of Honour accordingly, but have to admit that to us plebs oop North it all looks t'same.
One of the things I like about basketball is that the authorities are not afraid to tinker with the Rules, in a constant attempt to improve the game, for players and spectators alike. This is a pleasant contrast to sports such as soccer, where any changes to the hallowed regulations is considered as blasphemous (or worse).
The most recent changes (confirmed at the end of May by the Central Board of FIBA) are given in full in the News section (..\News\rule_changes.htm), but I thought that a brief summary and comment was in order here:
The abolition of the "jump ball" (except at the start of each period) should certainly speed up play, as it is replaced by alternating possession (from a sideline inbounds). This has the added benefit of ensuring that if a 5' 8" guard is able to force a 7' 4" opponent into a held-ball, then he'll actually gain possession 50% of the time!
The rule regarding the number and placing of Time Outs has been clarified, though I must admit that I've been confused as to what it is (was) last season, since BBL operated a different system from EB.
The most welcome change is that to the 24-second rule. This now ensures that if a shot hits the ring, then, so long as it had left the hand of the shooter before the buzzer sounded, it remains "live", and may be rebounded if the shot does not score. The rule as it stood was recognised by most players and fans as a complete nonsense, and practical experience bore that out!
Other changes to the Rules have been confirmed, but these don't come into force until 2004, so I'll leave the details of those till later. However, just for the record, in twelve months' time you can expect to witness mass panic at EB, as they realise that they don't have enough suitable officials for a 3-man officiating team for each match (after struggling to find enough for the current two officials per game).
You can also look forward(?) to watching Roy Birch do a little jig of joy (now there's a vision for you!) as the Women's game finally adopts the size 6 ball, for which he's been campaigning for twenty years ... and which the EB Board recently rejected!
A couple more additions to our "Who are they now?" series (which will have a page of its own sometime next week):
Peter Draper (who predated even Mark Hannen at EB, in the days when it was still called the English Basketball Association") is rumoured to be Marketing Manager for Manchester United (having previously worked for UMBRO).
Paul Stimpson (ex-Crystal Palace, and captain of the legendary England team which reached the European Championship Final Round) was last heard of working for ISL, the FIBA Marketing people.
If anyone knows of any further additions (or further details/corrections to the current bunch), please e-mail.
19/06/03
Hope you all enjoyed the excellent weather over the weekend. With my usual bad timing I've decided to build some new shelving on the end wall of my office/study, so I missed most of the best weather, cooped up inside with a drill and half a ton of MDF!
Mind you, the shelves are long overdue, and were prompted by having to hunt through piled up boxes of archive material for information to use in the "History" articles.
It's amazing how much you accumulate in 28 years of following basketball. I estimate that that equates to over 1,900 matches, and in excess of 900 match programmes - not to mention issues of the various monthly magazines that have been published during that time.
I know that's probably way short of the masses of material that Syd Lipski and John Atkinson have accumulated, but it's more than enough when you're hunting for specific information.
Anyway, this latest bout of hectic activity also accounts for the delay in the latest update to the "History" files. However, as soon as I've finished the shelves and sorted all the boxes out, I should be able to locate things more easily, and the articles should flow more readily.
Following the discussion of Jez Moxey, last week, Tom O'Shea has come up with another candidate for the "Who are they now?" feature.
Bill Beswick was coach to Stockport Belgrade, the team that later moved to Warrington (and eventually on to Stretford, to become Manchester United). He was a highly respected English coach, and had a spell with the England national team.
Tom tells me that he became a sports psychologist with Manchester United (well, nobody's perfect!), and that he later moved on to Middlesboro FC with Steve McClaren. Anybody know if he's still there?
The National Cup saga becomes more complicated (and more interesting) by the moment.
Apparently the decision to go for a "seeded" competition, under EB nationality regulations, is as far as its got at the moment, and the precise format is yet to be decided.
That format may well depend on the response of the BBL clubs, who seem to have been taken as much by surprise as the rest of us, and who, at the moment, "don't understand the logic of the decision". The BBL directors (i.e. the clubs) will be discussing the matter next month, so until then we won't know whether they'll even be entering!
15/06/03
Yes, the Jez Moxey who is Chief Executive of Wolverhampton Wanderers is the same as the one who used to play for Hemel. Thanks to Roy Birch for confirming that, together with the memory of his Mum holding up a placard at at match televised by Channel 4, saying "That's my boy".
Thanks, too, to Tom O'Shea for directing me to an article on the "soccernet" website which gives further confirmation. It seems that Jez arrived in soccer by a roundabout route. He ran the Glasgow Rangers basketball club, after it had bought the Kingston franchise in 1988, for their one season in the League (ending as Champions).
When David Murray took over the soccer club (and thus inherited the basketball team, too) he disposed of both Livingston (which he already owned) and the Rangers' basketball (selling them back to Kingston!), but Moxey found that he liked life in Glasgow so much that he decided to stay.
His Rangers' contacts led to a meeting with Partick Thistle, and he became their general manager in 1990, staying for five years, during which time they won promotion to the Scottish Premier Division, where they remained. In 1995 he joined Stoke City, back in the Football league, and then moved on to Wolverhampton Wanderers - where he has helped to guide them, too, into their respective Premier League.
12/06/03
Well, I finally managed to complete, and upload, a new chapter of the "History of the National Leagues". It's only taken eighteen months since the last one!
Trouble is that I just hadn't found time during the season, with so much news, and so many results to administer. Then, in the last "close season" I actually took an extended break, and didn't get round to the necessary background research. However, now that the "muse" is upon me again I find I've got into the swing of it again, and the first section of the story of the 1976-7 season is well on the way to completion, while I've got several other pages about that season also under preparation.
So, all being well there should be another update today or tomorrow, with further sections going online in the coming week.
While on the subject of the "History", I need to make a plea for information.
One of the major sources I'm using (apart from my memory, which is probably thoroughly unreliable by now!) is past issues of "Basketball" Magazine (the EBBA publication, which was one of the earliest news magazines about the sport in this country). Since I'm trying to enliven the text of my articles with pictures, this magazine is also proving to be the main source of relevant scans.
Now I certainly don't want to breach anybody's copyright (though the fact that the website itself doesn't make money would make it difficult for me to pay to use any pictures), but I'm having great difficulty making contact with most of the photographers whose byeline appears on the photographs. In fact the only one I have been able to identify and reach is Trevor Pountain, who has kindly given permission for me to use his work (though he did suggest that he'd appreciate a "cut" if I ever sell the site to become the next dot.com millionaire!).
So, while you're browsing the History section, if you recognise any of the photographers' names, and can give me any information about them (particularly how I can contact them), please let me know.
On the subject of trying to find things out, I was fascinated to come across a name from the past while listening to the radio the other day. The programme mentioned the Chief Executive of one of the West Midlands' soccer clubs (I forget which one, I'm afraid, but I think it was either Wolves or West Brom.), a gent by the name of Jez Moxey.
Now neither the surname nor the the given name are all that common, and I wondered, is this the same Jez Moxey who used to play for, and later became co-owner of, Hemel Royals? Does anyone know?
That set me thinking (rare occurrence though that is) and wondering how many others who began their careers in basketball have gone on to bigger things elsewhere. An obvious example is Ken Nottage - top class player, then administrator at Newcastle Eagles, who is now Chief Executive at Gloucester Rugby Union club (who have just had their best season for many year).
What others do you know of? Perhaps we could start a "Who are they now?" feature.
Finally, to put the record even straighter on the Mike Smith saga - not only has he not departed from BBL, he's actually in a much more secure position than he was before.
According to the "icBirmingham" news website, Mike did have a six-month rolling contract, but following pressure from Craig Bown (Bullets' uncontroversial owner), who wanted the BBL to appoint a "radical" Chief Executive (i.e. one who agrees with Bown's views) rather than a "safe pair of hands", Mike now has a new three-year contract.
Finally - if you're wondering when the "age-group" format for the coming season will be announced, you'll have to wait. Application forms have been sent out, but they're not due in until the end of the month - after which EB will make decisions on which teams will be in which Leagues (Premier or Conference). More about that nearer the time.
In the meantime, just in case anyone starts any silly rumours (as I accidentally did this time last year), let me tell you that the reason that Tim Pattle is not available at HQ for the next couple of weeks is because he's on holiday. After all the work he's put in since starting in what is probably the most thankless (but surprisingly rewarding ... though not financially) job in basketball, towards the end of last year, he certainly deserves the well-earned break.
06/06/03
Sorry about the late "Thursday" diary entry this week. It was my 7-year-old daughter's birthday on Wednesday, which ruled out doing anything much in midweek, and since then we've been preparing for Saturday's party (in the back garden ... in this weather ... !).
Anyway, there was a mini-update to the diary on Monday (to call off the Mike Smith rumour), so you haven't been kept totally in the dark.
Not that it's been an uneventful week on the basketball front, with the announcement of the composition of the National League divisions being the most noteworthy. I'm pleased to say that, with only a few exceptions, the various decisions didn't make Pawprint's preview analysis look too stupid, and we even correctly predicted some features (such as Arrows' move to Sheffield)!
What I found particularly pleasing, looking to the future of the NBL, is the emergence of several teams based on development programmes. In men's Division Two, East Durham and West Herts Warriors are good examples of clubs which have established a solid Junior base before launching into national senior competition, while Sheffield Arrows have become the latest club to boast a development team in the lower division.
In the WNBL, Manchester Mystics and Northants have both had outstanding seasons at youth level, and although Solent Stars and Spelthorne Acers are returning after a brief spell out of senior competition, they are both doing so with teams based on their development work.
The two biggest disappointments, for me, are the non-appearance of one men's and one women's team. Last year Barking & Dagenham dropped out of Division 2 Men, before the start of the season, for financial reasons, but I had hoped that they would be in a position to re-enter this year. In the WNBL, Swindon Sonics became the only team in either Men's or Women's competition not to re-enter this time. I understand that the reason was financial (they were unable to fund both a men's and women's team), but it's a great shame for a club which was planning, just twelve months ago, to run two women's teams - one in the WNBL Conference and one in the WNBL.
One interesting facet of the past week has been the sudden rise in numbers accessing the website. Once the playing season had finished, in the first week in May, the number of "hits" inevitably declined; the fact that results were the most popular aspect of the site was clear from the fact that Sundays and Mondays were the two days with the highest number of visitors.
However, this week there's been a rise of around 50% in the daily traffic, compared to the previous three weeks.
Part of this may be down to interest in the Mike Smith story (even though it eventually proved unfounded), and the fact that it was picked up on "What's Bev...?", which may have generated a few new interested surfers.
Mainly, though, I suspect it was a result of interest in the composition of the leagues, and I'm hoping that we'll have plenty of further information (such as fixtures, when available, and the Age-group league structure) to keep people interested.
Finally, I'm planning to keep my promise to begin the add further chapters to the "History of the National Leagues" that I started a couple of years ago.
I was browsing through some of the earlier chapters this week, to reacquaint myself with them, prior to completing the next instalment, and I noticed how badly laid-out the pages looked. In my defence, I was working on them about 21 months ago, and at that time I'd only been working with web-publishing software for three months, and had only just moved over to using Microsoft Front Page.
Anyway, I took the opportunity of "tidying up" several of the chapters (mainly the ones on the 1975-6 season), and I hope they're now a little easier on the eye.
The final chapter on that season (about the European campaigns of English teams) should be online sometime in the coming week (after I've recovered ... or dried out!... from this weekend's party).
02/06/03
Still no official word on the truth (or otherwise) of the rumour concerning Mike Smith's alleged departure from BBL. The item was mentioned in "What's Bev", and has attracted a number of replies, but all equally speculative.
I'll keep trying for clarification.
Update - 12.35pm. It seems that my e-mail's been conspiring against me. It bounced the BBL reply back to them - three days after they sent it!
I'm delighted that I can now confirm that there is absolutely no truth in the rumour. Mike Smith is alive and well, and still working hard at BBL (in fact he was at meetings all last week, which is why he didn't pick up on the suggestions).
As for promotion (and relegation), I can confirm just two changes so far - the promotion from Division 2 to Division 1 of Tamar Valley Cannons, and from Division 1 to the Conference of London United.
The rest of the changes are due out in today's Bulletin, so I'll do a full update then!