BITTEN BY THE GFC

Q

The Taipans had their fair share of financial struggles over their time in the NBL as well. How aware were you as a player of that off-court stuff?

A

I still remember the day we basically went into voluntary administration. We were training on Monday and we had a strong squad who couldn’t put it all together and then we’d just lost to a team we shouldn’t have. Then our owner and his daughter and the CEO and general manager all rolled into practice with about 30 minutes to go so we thought we were all about to cop a spray. We finished the session and they called us over. They started explaining the global financial crisis and how it had impacted their business, not for one second thinking we were going to be out of the job. At the end they said “we’ll let you know whether you’re playing this weekend,” and that’s when it sunk in. We were supposed to play Gold Coast on the Saturday but the liquidators had to come in. We had a meeting with the liquidators on Tuesday. There were supposed to be 12 players and coaching staff but only 10 players rolled in. They told us they’d released our two imports immediately. They said we were playing but they’d need to make other changes so we all caught up and drowned our sorrows. Stephen Black’s dad was also coach at that time and there was a bit of niggle between coaches and players which I never bought into but he was released as coach on the Thursday and Stephen left on the back of that. It was an ugly situation.