IN T' NET

An occasional Basketball Diary ... (from Yorkshire, in case tha'd not noticed)

HOME; Archive 2003-4; May 2004; June 2004;

31/07/04 - update

Many thanks to Barry for letting us know, and enabling us to set the record straight.

31/07/04

Bath contacted me to say that as far as they were concerned Lamble, who has played for them for several seasons, had not yet made a decision as to his future, and that he has assured them (since the appearance of the story) that he has not signed for Worcester.

Worcester, however, are adamant that Barry will be a Wolves' player next season, and I'm reliably informed that not only has he secured employment in the Worcester area, but that he has already helped out with some of the club's work with local youngsters. I notice, too, that the story of his signing does appear on Worcester's own website.

Meanwhile, Real Madrid are believed to have denied any interest in signing the player.

As Arsene Wenger might say, "Oh, merde".

The general point I was making, though, remains valid ... that with the reduced staffing level it must be very difficult to maintain the same level of service that has traditionally been the hallmark of BBL.

Anyway, apologies to Andy ... and to anybody who has put off contacting the BBL in the belief that he was still away.

27/07/04

The official reason for the delay is that one of the long-established member clubs is having to relocate, and the fixtures cannot be released until that move is completed.

That may well have contributed to the decision to delay the fixtures, but with the reduced staffing levels at BBL, I wonder whether they would have been able to publish them by the end of July anyway ... especially as the entire BBL staff (Andy Webb) has been away on holiday until about ten days ago!

As to which team is the one relocating, the obvious candidate is Leicester Riders (and Britball confirm that in their article). Now the Leicester relocation story first broke way back in April, when it was suggested that Leicester City Council were looking at giving some form of support to the team in their efforts to return to the city (which they left a couple of years ago, for their original home town of Loughborough, when the said City Council decided to demolish their venue at the Granby Halls).

What seems strange (and adds weight to the suggestion that this is not the only reason for the delay) is that a proposed venue move by one club should hold up the entire fixture programme. Last season Birmingham had to reschedule many of their fixtures after they had been published when they were forced out of the Aston Event Centre, and moved to the Birmingham Sports Centre. It would seem possible, therefore, to publish the fixtures, with Leicester's home dates (and possibly their away ones, in case they had to switch some to accommodate venue availability) accepted as provisional.

I wonder whether the full reason is that the move is not entirely certain to go ahead, and that if it doesn't, Leicester's whole future could be cast into doubt (there have been enough rumours of that on the message boards this summer). Looking back, when there were eleven teams in the League, teams played each other three times; last season, with just ten teams, they played each other four times. If fixtures were published for an eleven team League and then one pulled out, it would cause real chaos. That, perhaps, is the real reason for the delay.

22/07/04

"Great" I thought, "I can actually sit back and relax and concentrate on the game for once".

I should know better, shouldn't I? I sensed that I was to be thwarted, when I got to the door and noticed an expression of relief come over Jeff Jones' face. Sure enough, I was greeted with, "Pete, our announcer hasn't turned up ... could you do the introductions for us ...?"

I wasn't really dressed for the part (jeans and a scruffy tee-shirt), but how can you resist a plea like that? Anyway, Jeff's bigger than me. So, having done the introductions I decided I'd got a good view from the announcer's desk, so I did the whole game anyway.

Don't forget, you still owe me that pint Jeff.

15/07/04

You'll notice that the competitions have changed their names since last year, and we've dropped the descriptions "Junior", "Cadet" and "BAM" (I never did understand what the latter stood for anyway) in favour of FIBA's method of description by age.

Sorting the clubs into divisions at this level is notoriously difficult, as the strength of a team varies dramatically as players graduate to the next age-group, and a new group take their place. Anyway, I reckon that Nicky Brown, at the Competitions Department, has done an excellent job to get them out this early, which should give clubs a chance to sort their venues in plenty of time, and make any necessary rearrangements.

The task must have been particularly difficult for the under-16s, as there were too many entries to have twelve teams in the Northern and Midlands Conferences. As a result, the North has been split into North-East and North-West sub-Conferences, and the Midlands has been split into Midlands and Central. This will probably mean that the play-offs will gain an additional, preliminary round, to determine the two qualifiers from the North as a whole and the two from  Midlands/Central.

The reason's simple - there isn't any news yet! Apparently the hearing was scheduled for four days last week, but failed to finish even in five. Since the barristers all had other commitments this week, it's had to be postponed until August.

It strikes me that those guys are the only ones who'll come out of the whole sorry saga in profit.

Anyway, Sod's Law decrees that the ruling will probably given while I'm away for my two week's mandatory sunshine (and this year I reckon I could really need it ... the only colour I've got in this weather is rust, so you may have to wait for news of the outcome until even later in the month.

10/07/04

Dan is, it seems, is leaving today, following in the footsteps of Mike Smith and Bev Bishop, which means that the three most senior and most experienced members of the professional staff have all gone within the space of a few weeks.

In fact it's very difficult to quantify the full impact of Dan's departure. Having grown up in a basketball family, he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the game, and at times could even rival me as a basketball anorak ... with the main difference being that he could recall data and details off the top of his head, while I have to resort to checking my files!

In his nine years at BBL, Dan's skills have been invaluable not just for communicating to the membership, but in the production of items like the comprehensive Press Pack at major BBL events. I can envisage that one knock-on effect of the changes at BBL could be an unemployment crisis among Scandinavian lumberjacks as the demand for paper takes a major hit.

It's noticeable, though, that the flow of (usually regular) information from BBL, which keeps the League, and the sport generally, in the public eye, appears to have dried up recently. Apart from the occasional ranting on the Bullets' website, there's been no mention of the events at headquarter (even on the BBL website). And can it really be coincidental that news stories such as Brighton Bears' entry into European competition again this year, and the appointment of a new coach at Birmingham, have passed virtually without notice?

Anyway, I'm told that what's going on within BBL is known as "restructuring". Restructuring? Isn't that what the Luftwaffe did to London in the 1940s?

With rumours of Sky possibly broadcasting a regular Monday evening game, wouldn't it be ironic if they were to use their match commentator who did such a good job the last time - and Dan found himself covering games from the League that has just dispensed with his services!

For EB there's the little matter of having to defend themselves against ex-England Coach Laszlo Nemeth in front of an Industrial Tribunal in Leeds.

The Tribunal, hearing Laszlo's case for compensation after the Association found itself so strapped for cash that they chose not to enter the European Championships and thus dispensed with his services, has been meeting for the whole of last week. I'm not sure how long these things take, but I should imagine that a ruling could be coming out sometime fairly soon.

The irony is that even if the ruling were to go against the Association, the chances of Laszlo actually getting anything are slim, as such a ruling could tip the delicate balance of the financial recovery of the past year or so. Indeed, if that were to happen, I suspect that the word "nemesis" could well pronounced with a lisp!

05/07/04

Indeed, during the early evening I had a great time, zipping through the files on Fixtures Live to Archive the Divisions from last season. This involves a huge amount of switching between pages, but it was done in no time at all. Delighted that it had all gone so smoothly, I settled down to watch the evening's football. 

I should have known better ... as soon as I switched the computer back on I knew there was something wrong, as a dial-up dialogue box appeared which just wouldn't go away, and I then found that I couldn't access most of my applications.

It turned out that I'd got a nasty dose of Sasser virus, and I spent the next 36 hours laboriously retrieving files and copying them onto rewritable CDs, using a CD writer that was running at about 10% of its normal speed, and 10% of its capacity!!

For the next few days I was working on my laptop, from the CDs, while I wrestled with the problem of how to revive my system. In the end the only solution was to completely wipe the hard drive clean and start from scratch ... but that meant reinstalling all my software programmes, and then reloading all the information from the CDs.

So, today's really the first time I've really been able to do much apart from that - but the good news is that the Broadband is now up and running smoothly, and while I was reloading my system I upgraded to Windows XP, so my programmes should operate faster and more efficiently too!

And it could have been worse ... at least it didn't happen in mid-season.

So, if you're still awaiting a reply from me to a relatively recent communication ... could you mail it to me again, please.

In particular, I know there's a club secretary out there waiting for me to ring him about our "Find the Team" Gamecards. Sorry, but your phone number was gobbled up by Sasser ... can you send it again.

It wasn't just one person, but it seemed as though every pundit, show-host, interviewer and commentator didn't know the correct preposition to use with the word "different". I lost count of the number of times I heard people and events described as "different to" each other, and regardless of whether it was on BBC, ITV or Radio Five Live I can't recall hearing a single person use the correct "different from".

At least the one saving grace was that no-one seemed to use the ugly and inappropriate American version, "different than".

Now I know that language is constantly evolving and changing, but this is such a logical grammatical construct that it seems sheer laziness to get it wrong. After all, the word "to" suggests drawing together, while "from" is defined in the Oxford Dictionary using the word "away", so it should be self-evident which one is used with "different". Shouldn't people who make a living through the use of language know better?

Not that football commentators are the only guilty parties. On Sunday the co-commentator on the French Grand Prix explained that Jenson Button had told him that Sato did "a few things differently to me", but the best example I've come across recently was in a written document that advises people not to worry if "you receive your payment at a different time to someone else ...". That was sent out by the government's Department of Work and Pensions!

Eee. It were never like that when I were a lad.