Mountaineers forced to sit out season

THE inaugral NBL1 North season has been officially cancelled, however the Mountaineers remain optimistic about 2021.

NO GO: The Toowoomba Mountaineers will not take part in state basketball this year with the cancellation of the 2020 NBL1 North season. Picture: File

BASKETBALL: Hopes were high for the Mountaineers to turn their fortunes around with the formation of the new NBL1 North competition.

Those aspirations will remain on hold for a season however, with confirmation the league would not go ahead in 2020.

Just last week it was announced that the season would be postponed until at least the middle of May, with clubs set to meet at the start of April to discuss further developments in the coronavirus situation.

The latest government sanctions, including the indefinite closure of indoor sports centres, put the league in a compromised position.

This means that the NBL1 North season, along with the NBL1 South (Victoria) and NBL1 Central (South Australia) leagues have been cancelled.

In a statement, NBL CEO Andy Crook said it was a tough decision to make, but the right one.

“Obviously this is unfortunate but it is the most appropriate decision under the current circumstances,” he said.

“The health and safety of players, staff and officials as well as the wider community comes first.

“We also want to allow the clubs to focus on re-establishing grassroots basketball as a matter of priority when the time is right.

“I want to acknowledge the efforts of everyone involved in NBL1, in particular Basketball Victoria, Basketball Queensland, Basketball South Australia and all of our clubs and players.

“We will work with them as we continue to monitor the situation and work towards resuming basketball at a community level at the appropriate time.”

It’s a devastating blow for the Mountaineers, with men’s coach Martyn Ford predicting it will impact a lot of people in the community.

“It hurts a lot of people, not only the players, but sponsors, spectators, officials and everyone that work behind the scenes,” Ford said.

“It takes a lot of work to get a team on the court, and it’s a big let down after we started to get some momentum going with a really good pre-season.

“It’s disappointing but we understand the situation at hand. It’s really about the safety of everyone, their families and everything that goes with that.”

Ford said that while the hurt was still raw, they would push ahead towards coming back stronger in 2021.

“We’ll go straight into planning for 2021. We want to try and keep the group together,” he said.

“Over the next few months we’ll be locking down, making sure ourselves and our families are all safe, and then we’ll look at individual programs for players and starting the pre-season even earlier.

“This could be a blessing in disguise. We had a few players worried about injuries, now everyone can get their body right and get ready for a big 2021.

“We can take this in our stride and look at ways that we can close the gap (between other teams) and look at ways to get ourselves right and be even more competitive.”

Originally published as