Marlins’ leap to big league
CAIRNS Marlins teammates George Blagojevic and Anthony Fisher were all smiles yesterday morning after they were both added to the Cairns Taipans roster for the upcoming NBL season. The pair had their QBL seasons ended last Saturday but they will bounce straight into pre-season training now with the Snakes.
MARLINS coach Jamie O’Loughlin is adamant the two NBL pre-season games played by a handful of his squad had no impact on the QBL club’s abrupt and unexpected exit from the play-offs.
Marlins rotation players George Blagojevic, Anthony Fisher, Christian Jurlina, Fabijan Krslovic, Mason Khalu and Jakobe Hunter were called up to fill the Taipans squad for their two games against college teams on Wednesday and Thursday, before having to back up in the Saturday night quarter-final.
After qualifying higher on the QBL ladder than their Rockhampton opponents, Cairns were eliminated from the finals at the first hurdle, their earliest exit in four seasons.
O’Loughlin, who is also the Taipans assistant, believes fatigue from the two pre-season games played no role in the Marlins’ season ending.
“Very little, they helped sharpen up the guys to a large extent, because the intensity level of those guys was a lot higher than this,” he said.
“I do not think it hurt our groups. We changed one training session to make those games fit. That is not the reason we lost.”
The Taipans split their midweek pre-season games 1-1.
A similar scenario happened in 2017 when the majority of the Marlins squad played three games in between QBL quarter and semi-finals before they were knocked out by Townsville.
“What is disappointing is that we had a chance to win and we could not find a way to do it,” O’Loughlin said.