Circuit’s all part of dream for Mitch

AS a three-year-old, former Cairns Taipan Mitch McCarron wasn’t big enough to shoot the hoops but that never stopped the tenacious toddler from doing Larry Bird and Michael Jordan impersonations.

The Alice Springs-born son of basketball tragics Don and Louise would instead tow along a rubbish bin and shoot at it for hours while his parents ran the outback stadium.

If not shooting, McCarron, who spent the first four years in the Red Centre, would be buzzing at the feet of anyone on the court, including visiting NBL teams and the Harlem Globetrotters.

“That’s all he wanted to do. He wasn’t interested in bikes or anything else,” Don McCarron, director of coaching at Brisbane’s Northside Wizards said.

“The stadium was basically his backyard. It was too hot to have a backyard so he used to cut loose.”

The McCarrons practically lived at the airconditioned venue, partly due to the explosion of basketball in that region between 1992-96, but also to escape the searing heat.

Young McCarron had the run of the place and hundreds of juniors – “babysitters” – to play with.

Among them were Australian basketball stalwarts Brad and Mia Newley, whose parents, Arthur and Janelle, moved to Alice Springs for work about two years after the McCarrons.

While McCarron’s memory of those early years is scant, the Melbourne United and Boomers star – raised in Brisbane – is desperate to get back to Alice Springs.

“I don’t remember a tonne, but I used to love playing oneon-one against the imports,” McCarron said.

The Taipans face Melbourne United in a fortnight.