MOVING ON UP
Q
The time finally came in 2005 for you to make your NBL debut for Cairns. What are your memories of that moment?
A
We were playing the New Zealand Breakers and we were 30odd points up and you never get on court unless you’re 30 points up or 30 points down. I remember Deba George was tapping my leg with a few minutes to go saying: ‘We’re going to get on here.’ I started getting the shakes and had a dry mouth and then the coach came and pointed as us both. It was a packed house and Deba brought the ball down the court and put it out to me and that was when I put down my first NBL points
Q
You eventually cracked the elusive 10 and Cairns offered you a spot on their main roster. Did you feel like you’d made it at that point?
A
We had a bunch of injuries and, as a development player, I was playing pretty well and then they had to release an import so I got elevated into the full-time squad. We had a good back of the season but there was one game we were playing the Singapore Slingers and we were down by 10 points going in the final quarter. We had a superstar squad with guys like Martin Cattalini, Nathan Jawai, Stephen Black and Darnell Mee but we couldn’t put it together. That day, the coach had the s**ts so he started our whole bench squad, which was our Marlins state league squad, and we beat an NBL team. I had 16 points in the last quarter. I had a couple good years but I was pretty easily strayed when it came to having a bit of fun off the court so the hard work wasn’t there by the end of it.