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The Voice Daniel Routledge
Topic Started: Sep 18 2007, 08:35 PM (778 Views)
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22 AUG ITS GREAT TO BE BACK

SULLIVAN SUPPORTS EAGLES SCHOLARSHIPS

Newcastle Eagles and Great Britain captain Andrew Sullivan have joined forces to offer three North-East based youngsters scholarships with the club which will see them officially join the roster for the 2007/08 BBL season..

The Eagles have handed opportunities to Aaron Nielson, Adam Hall and Wil Spragg to formally link up with the team as they seek to develop a career for themselves in the sport.

The scholarships have arisen after Sullivan, a former Eagles player who has since played in the Spanish ACB with European giants DKV Joventut first put the idea to Managing Director Paul Blake.

“Andrew approached us earlier this year to discuss the possibility of him financially supporting some of the young talent we have in the area.” explained Blake.

“All credit must go to him for planting the seed which has seen both him and the club coming together to give a trio of young guys a real chance of making it in professional basketball.”

“It is a great gesture by Andrew and it shows he is passionate and committed to supporting young people in our game.”

He continued “Aaron, Adam and Will are all aged between 16 and 18 and have come through our rapidly developing community programmes in the area. Aaron is from the West End, Adam is from Kenton and Wil is from Bensham in Gateshead”

“They have trained with the club for around a year and a half now and after Andrew backed his idea we spoke to Fab Flournoy and Andrew Bridge who were also keen to see us go ahead.”

“We have always recruited British players and have been pro-active in this respect and this is the next step in terms of doing everything possible to now develop the potential that we have right here on our doorstep.”

Sullivan meanwhile who will play for Mons in Belgium this season is delighted to hace seen his proposal come to fruition and is looking forward to tracking the progress of the young Eagles players.

He said “We need to ensure that some young British talents have the opportunities to come through our own system and make it into the professional game.”

“There are no guarantees of course but with some financial help and the correct mentoring and support we can at least give them every opportunity to succeed.”

“This will give them the chance to commit to club duties for a year and they fully deserve their chance. I am sure they can now develop themselves as players and they have the potential to succeed and we all hope they can now realise this.”


The game went as to be expected, GB easing home by 25 with the Slovaks having very little to offer against a well-tuned Chris Finch defence.

At the offensive end we look a lot more balanced than 12 months ago, with weapons all over the floor. The strength we have at 3-4-5 also allows Midgley and Reinking more space to shoot than we would have seen in the past.

After missing a couple of early looks, Luol gave the people what they came for - a stellar 21-point, 10-rebound performance with some awesome highlights. Top of the list for me was the dunk driving baseline and the block from the weak side in the second half.

Deng is probably the best kind of NBAer for GB to have. He's a superstar, make no mistake about it, but he knows it's a team game and the rest of the team is better for that.

Most impressive for me was the play of Andy Betts and Rob Archibald inside. Archibald has all the dogged grit of his dad and was a real boost on the offensive boards. And both proved too much to handle inside, scoring and getting to the line with relative ease - something that bodes well for the trip to Belarus.

We all know the importance of the next few weeks for GB and basketball in this country in general, but having seen the team at first hand I'm pretty confident we have more than enough to achieve our goals.

Looking forward, whether we have enough strength in depth at the -2 position to really challenge the big boys in Division A would be my only concern, but let's hope we can get there and find out.
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18 SEP BACK FROM THE BRINK

You can’t beat this time of year. Everyone’s top of the league and believing this is going to be their season. We can all dream of glory, safe in the knowledge we’ve not missed a shot yet.

But when the ball goes up on Saturday night at John Sandford, it will be a pretty emotional time for Riders fans. We’ve been the lemmings of British basketball for a few years, but every time we get to the edge of the cliff, we’ve somehow bottled jumping off it.



I’ve seen the precipice more times than I care to remember, but fortunately we’ve always managed to avoid falling into it. Last month I left a meeting thinking that was that, I’d seen my last Riders game, but a week later I helped write a release about a new era for basketball in my hometown.

The Jelson Homes deal is a fantastic one for the club and gives the Riders a real platform from which to build, but in truth it was the fans who saved the club. It was those who came to the fans’ forum, heard the cold, hard facts and didn’t turn away, instead saying ‘here’s what I can do to help’.

It was one of those moments when you realised what the club means to the fans. It was also the moment that Jelson decided this was something they wanted to be a part of. I’d like to personally thank every Riders fan for that night.

It was also pretty cool to read letters in the Leicester Mercury for a week or more from all corners of the BBL pledging their support for the Riders. My thanks go to those out there who cared enough to be bothered about another club’s strife.

Life begins at 40? Let’s hope so!

A lot of people have said to me ‘you must be delighted that the Riders have been saved’, but if truth be told, my own happiness is waaaaayyyy down the list.

More than anyone else, I’m delighted for my dad – he’s put more time, money and effort into basketball in this country than just about anyone else. He’s certainly given more to the Riders than anyone in the club’s 40-year history. In return all he ever claimed to be was a custodian, ensuring that basketball fans in Leicestershire had a team to watch. He, more than anyone else, deserves the team to survive long into the future.




I’m delighted for Mookie too. Were it not for my dad, I’d have never had the love of the game and the Riders that I do - I want my son to have that too. Plus, he needs a place to play the season before he goes to the NBA for his stellar All-Star career and his final season before retirement to concentrate on his ‘Brand Mookie’ sportswear (we can but dream!).

And I’m delighted for the Riders fans. I know many of them personally and it’s fair to say we’ve had more thin than thick. For those who came for a year and saw just one win; those who queued for an hour last February not knowing why; those who’ve been coming for many a season and seen just two trophies; those who just love their team no matter what, you deserve only the best.

Looking at it like that, I probably fall into that last category, so I’m at best third, probably, fourth, on my list of people I’m happy for.

I won’t get into thanking those who’ve helped keep things going – you know who you are and you’re in it for the same reasons as me!

Away from the Riders, it was great to see GB serve Switzerland up on a plate in Sheffield last week. It was no more than me and Kev expected going in, but they delivered, so credit where it’s due. The second leg was a formality after that.

No disrespect to those other teams, but I’m looking forward to seeing some proper teams playing GB next year. I still have concerns about depth at the guard position, but other than that, I think we have a squad that can compete at the elite level.

Here’s to a great season and may your team do the sweep (as long as you’re a Riders fan)!
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06 OCTOBER FORGET ABOPUT PASSPORTS

Never one to shy aware from the media, Sepp Blatter has been in the headlines this week calling for a limit on non-nationals in European football. Apparently he advocates challenging the EU on the basis that “footballers are not workers.”

He continued, "You cannot consider a footballer like any normal worker because you need 11 to play a match - and they are more artists than workers."

Two points: a) they are getting paid, ergo they are workers; b) my wife’s a dancer and I’ve never seen quotas of non-nationals in dance companies, but I have seen many that consist of 11 or more performers!

During my time at the BBL, the one stick that was used repeatedly from all corners to beat us with was player eligibility. Over a decade out from Bosman, with the benefit of hindsight and the impartiality of not working for BBL, I can categorically say they got that call exactly right.

To be honest - and I don’t actually know who made the call - the decision to go 5 nationals and 5 non-nationals was unbelievably accurate. The reasoning behind it was all the best of British would go abroad, thus stretching the number of foreigners would fill the talent gap that left.

The players, media, even some fans said it was a vast over-reaction - only the “best of the best” would leave. But they were all wrong. The best of the best left and so too did the mediocre. The BBL would have died had they not pre-emptively reacted the way they did.

A quick look at the Britishs (sic) Abroad on Eurobasket will show you they’re still out there. And look at all those asterisks. In the pre-Bosman days those guys would only really be eligible to play over here too.

Now think back to who was playing pro ball abroad the season before Bosman. Amaechi, Bucknall and Dunkley. That was it. Three players.

For financial reasons we are an exporting country when it comes to basketball and maybe we always will be.

So when I hear Blatter talking of limits I usually laugh. Firstly, football is always at least three years behind basketball when it comes to this sort of thing. They were with Bosman (and he was a footballer!), they are with Kolpak and I don’t think they have even heard of the Cotonou Agreement.

Secondly do you really think the G14 – money is power – will be told they can’t have the best players in the world because they’re not from your country?

And finally, sorry Sepp, but the boat sailed on that one years ago.


Maybe someone in FIBA should phone him up and tell him. FIBA tried to control the numbers of non-nationals in domestic leagues years ago and realised pretty quickly they were on to a loser.

Sensibly they gave it up as a bad idea and decided their priority was to defend national teams (something they could achieve) and ensure that they remained as pure as possible.

They managed it and should be applauded for doing so. Rugby Union showed us all the abyss of letting go of control over international sport and fortunately managed to claw back from it, no other sport should ever get that far.

What would a limit achieve anyway? Was life better before the foreigners came into football? I don’t know, but the football sure as hell wasn’t. Would the England team start winning tournaments? Well they’ve been a quarter-final team in the post-Bosman era and they were a didn’t-always-qualify team before it, so I can’t see how kicking Johnny Foreigner out would help.

To me it was always a bizarre irony that EB called loudest and hardest for BBL to scrap their eligibility rules, whilst their own allowed a totally foreign team. Lest we forget, whatever you say about the 5 and 5 rule, at least five of your players had to be British, whereas now they don’t.

But what does it matter? Does anyone really care that 15 of the 24 players in the Euroleague Final were non-national? Or that 12 of the 22 starters in the Champions League Final were too? Or that the NBA Champions had 6 in their line-up including their five leading scorers in the decisive Game 4?

If your answer to any of those is ‘Yes’, then my reply would be ‘Why?’

Why do you want domestic-only sport? It seems somewhat jingoistic to me. I want to see good sport, I don’t care who plays it. Also as a son of Canadian father, Irish mother and born in Leicester where is my domestic league?

I’d rather bump into Andy Betts in town once a summer knowing he’s carving out a great career in Europe, than see him every Saturday night playing for the Riders because he’s stuck here not able to maximise his talent and earn what he’s worth. Sadly he would never have played in the Euroleague Final if he only ever played for the Riders.

In writing this blog I stumbled across an article I wrote years ago for the BBL. Back then everyone thought it was the nasty BBL with their anti-British eligibility rules, whilst the rest of Europe stuck with 2 Americans and a crop of locally grown talent. Even then BBL was behind Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Euroleague Top 16 teams for averages for non-national players.

I want GB to succeed as much as the next fan. I want to see us at the 2012 Olympics and I want to see us compete, hell even win it!! Does anyone think a quota system will help that?

Seven of the GB side that went 2-2 in the first half of the campaign played in the BBL the season before. Only one of the side that went 6-0 this summer did. Which team would you rather see?

For GB to be able to compete, the players must play at the highest level. For them to do that, they must be in the best leagues and that means playing abroad. Any quota system that is brought in would diminish British players’ chances of playing abroad and that would harm British basketball more than it would help by ‘bring our boys back home’.

You know what I’d like? No rules. Let players play where they will. Let fans see the best players their team can attract.

Sport is universal language, so let’s not get wrapped up in accents, flags or passports.



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24 OCT THE PROBLEM WITH ODD SHAPED BALLS

Right, before I do this, I want to go on the record as saying I like rugby. I’m from Leicester, home of the world’s greatest club team (in my opinion), you have to like rugby. Hell, the game was invented a couple of miles down the road from us. So you’re clear (especially if my father-in-law is reading this), I like rugby, I watch rugby and I enjoy it.

For you Northerners, by rugby, I mean the proper version, not your take on it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate league, but (like most people not from Yorkshire, Lancashire and small pockets of Australia and New Zealand) I just don’t really watch it that much.

I watched the World Cup and, apart from the Irish going out fairly dismally, I really enjoyed it. I wanted England to win the final (and thought Cueto scored that try) because that would have been the sort of sporting story I love – the comeback from those written off by everyone – plus who doesn’t love the Aussies and French getting their words shoved backed down their throats?

OK, now I’ve got that out of the way, let’s face it, rugby has shown us over the last six weeks just what a minority sport it is. We’ve just witnessed what most observers have called the greatest World Cup ever – “a topsy-turvy” tournament to quote Miles Harrison.

Translation: It was a bit of a contest. Wow, the team who were ranked 6th in the world at the start of the competition finished third! Wow, the defending champions got to the final! Wow, some of the crappy teams didn’t even get humiliated in every game! Wow, some of the bigger teams played rubbish and only won without a bonus point!

Let’s face it, the IRB rankings may go all the way down to 95, but only about a dozen countries really play rugby. If this is not the case, then when was the last time you saw England play Bosnia, Finland or Israel? After all, they are world ranked teams and England’s footballers have played Andorra and Estonia, who rank lower (169th and 127th), in the Euro qualifiers.

Here’s a test: how many professional rugby leagues are there in the world? Go on count, I’ll let you use your fingers! Got past one hand yet? Didn’t think so.

‘But Daniel, rugby is essentially an amateur game, we’ve only recently moved into the professional ranks’. So? Alright then, how many decent amateur leagues are there? Still don’t need your toes do you?



Sure this World Cup was a bit interesting in terms of results, but that’s a first. Four years ago I was in a pub (hard to believe but true!) with a group of rugby-mad mates on the eve of the World Cup. Much discussion was had about all matters rugby and not being an expert, I was mainly listening (again hard to believe but true!). But one-by-one they went through the group games, quarters, semis and final and yet to a man they told me exactly who was going to beat whom.

The only argument came about whether Australia would beat New Zealand in the semis and then go on to lose to England in the final. You know what? They were all right (except those who said NZ of course). Not much of a competition is it if a bar full of lads agree on all but one result over six weeks of action?

Not much of a global competition if a team who were ranked as high as fourth over the last few weeks can’t even get in to the only two international competitions outside of the World Cup.

‘So what Daniel?’ you may ask, this is badaball.com not rugaball.com, what’s this blog all about?

Well, our TV, radio and papers have devoted copious amounts of airtime and column inches to a sport that is globally insignificant. Yet did anyone see, hear or read anything about Russia’s dramatic Eurobasket win last month?

When I mention basketball to most people the response is ‘Oh yeah, the Harlem Globetrotters, they’re good aren’t they?’ Err no, they’re circus clowns, that’s not sport, its Billy Bates stuff.

But therein lies our problem. As long as the public, and therefore the editors and producers, think the Globetrotters are basketball, we will continue to be a minority sport in this country.

‘But basketball, it’s just played by lanky Americans isn’t it?’ Err no, I think you’ll find that America doesn’t even win tournaments any more. Spain, Argentina, Serbia have been the World/Olympic champions since 2000. America has won one tournament in a decade and they were lucky to even get to the final that year.

Which team sport is played in more countries than any other? Basketball. Which team sport is played by more people than any other? Basketball. I remember talking to Chris Finch years ago and asked him why he thought the Brits just don’t get basketball.

To paraphrase his answer, it was because they don’t realise what the rest of the world do – it’s not just lanky Americans. They don’t even realise the rest of Europe does get it.

Most people I know think it’s amazing I spent a month in Qatar last year commentating on basketball at the Asian Games. They don’t know what the South Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Lebanese, Iranians, Syrians et al do; this is the world’s most popular team sport.

But here, rugby is a real power, so too cricket, darts and snooker, games that much of the world don’t know even exist. But let’s hope one day - summer of 2012??? – they will. here ...
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16 NOV

I was going to talk about the unsportsmanlike foul in my AOB, but thinking about it, I can only give the argument the justice I think it deserves here.

To be clear, this is not a pop at referees in any way, shape or form. I’m generally on the side of the MIGs. I’ve watched too many games as a neutral to believe the conspiracy theories.

Don’t get me wrong, I occasionally suffer from myteam-myopia, but, in general, I support the refs. This argument is about the rule, not the people who enforce it.

To me, the unsportsmanlike foul is no longer the rule it seemed to be when it first replaced the intentional.

As an example, in the last 75s of the recent Riders-Rocks games two were called, one against each team, and both could have won the game. As it happened neither did, but that was more to do with sloppy foul shooting than anything else.

A quick read of Article 36 of the Official Rules of Basketball will show that the refs got both calls right, but as a fan I’d much rather see neither punished with shots and possession.

To paraphrase, Article 36 says if you don’t play the ball or you commit a hard foul, it’s an unsportsmanlike. Whatever happened to ‘earning it from the line’? Both the fouls I’m referring to were committed to stop someone scoring an open lay-up at the end of a tight

Neither was excessively hard, so it must have been the ‘not playing the ball’ part of the rule that caused them to be unsportsmanlike. Here’s the thing though, when the unsportsmanlike foul came into being, EB sent out a directive clearly stating that a foul to stop the clock at the end of the game was not to be called an unsportsmanlike foul, as was too often the case with the intentional.




I remember it really well because the same week we received that letter, I played a local league game and at the end of OT was called for an unsportsmanlike which finished our slim chances of winning – I remember it because was the first time I’d ever fouled out of a game (I’m a good boy really or lazy on D - one or the other).

What p’d me off the most was we had a FIBA referee calling our local league game and he blew it on me!

I actually posted him a copy of the letter from EB with that paragraph highlighted!

It still seems to be the case, you can foul a guy in the backcourt to stop the clock and as long as you don’t hammer him, it’ll get called a regular foul. So what’s the difference between that and stopping someone from scoring? To my mind nothing, as long as you don’t take his head off in the process.

I’ve always worked on the basis ‘if you’re going to foul him, foul him’. Nothing drives me more nuts than a cheap foul resulting in an and-one. If you’re not going to at least try to stop him scoring, then don’t foul him!

The same is true of wrapping someone up in the mid-court to stop the fast break - is that really worth two and possession? Personally, I don’t think so, unless what you do could or does hurt the opponent.

I just think there should be a middle ground. If you’re committing a ‘deliberate foul’ - to stop the clock, stop a guy scoring or stop a fast break - maybe that should be a two-shot foul irrespective of the team foul count or whether he’s shooting. The unsportsmanlike, punished with shots and possession, could then be reserved for excessively hard or dangerous fouls.

Maybe even such a deliberate foul could result in a choice of shots or possession - as it used to be years ago when a team was over the limit - so the offender doesn’t necessarily gain an advantage from fouling. Let’s face it, the foul to stop the clock usually does gain you advantage if you are over the limit and are lucky enough to foul a Lynard Stewart or a Cypheus Bunton.

I guess all I want is results decided on the final shot, made or missed, not because you get two and possession. It seems the more sporting way in my mind.

But given you can now get a T for ‘flopping’, I guess I might be a lone voice in this argument.
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