Basketball Australia funding most of the $40,000 required for Mount Gambier Pioneers’ inclusion to SA Premier League

BASKETBALL Australia will foot the majority of the $40,000 bill for Premier League teams to travel to Mount Gambier this season as the Pioneers enter the competition on a one-year deal.

Hobart’s Tre Nichols drives against Mount Gambier, which will be joining Basketball SA’s Premier League this year. Picture: FIONA HARDING

• Dramatic re-vote and resignation sees Pioneers into Premier League

BASKETBALL Australia will foot the majority of the $40,000 bill for Premier League teams to travel to Mount Gambier this season as the Pioneers enter the competition on a one-year deal.

Adelaide clubs will not be required pay for travel, accommodation and meal expenses when their men’s and women’s teams make the 870km round trip to the southeast.

Instead, Basketball Australia and the Pioneers will give each of the 10 other clubs $4000 to cover the costs.

Basketball Australia acting chief executive Paul Maley would not disclose the exact amount the governing body would contribute but said it would pay for the “majority.”

The Pioneers will be required to fund the travelling teams’ costs for any finals played in Mount Gambier.

Chargers’ Craig Moller battles against Mount Gambier’s Lewis Thomas. Picture: FIONA HARDING

Clubs last month agreed to allow the Pioneers – who in November were left without a competition to play in after the SEABL competition disbanded – to join the previously city-based league for 2019.

Mount Gambier is set to make five journeys to Adelaide to play double-header matches to limit the extent of its own travel.

Pioneers president Tom Kosch said he was thankful to Basketball SA and the clubs for handing them a lifeline.

“For what we have been through as a club and a community, we’re looking forward to get on with playing basketball,” Kosch said.

“If it went any longer we would have been forced to scale back the club or even fold it.

“So we were extremely grateful to them for providing us a lifeline on Christmas Eve.”

Mount Gambier was not given a licence for Basketball Australia’s new “senior elite league”, which replaced the SEABL, and was also denied a place in Victoria’s Big V competition.

The Pioneers then applied for Adelaide’s Premier League.

Clubs initially turned down the proposal in a 6-4 vote – one short of the required 70 per cent majority – because of concerns over the strength of the Pioneers, their lack of a women’s team and funding travel.

A re-vote was then held three days later and the motion passed when those concerns were alleviated.

They are one of SA’s most successful basketball clubs, having won three SEABL championships since 2014.

But due to the uncertainty that hung over the club, Kosch said the Pioneers’ men’s roster would be “vastly different” to recent seasons.

Basketball SA chairman Mark Lampshire said the association would continue to do what was best for basketball in the state.

“Mount Gambier will continue to apply to join the Victorian league and, if they get knocked back again, then we’ll revisit it again at the end of the season,” Lampshire said.

“It’s good that they’ve now got a home and it’s good that the process went through Basketball Adelaide, through the clubs, and it’s taken the financial burden away from the clubs.”

Originally published as Basketball Australia funding most of the $40,000 required for Mount Gambier Pioneers’ inclusion to SA Premier League