Cairns

Among all the opportunities I have pursued since 19 August, one feels different.

Cairns Basketball. General Manager.

I applied through Sportspeople on the evening of 19 August, the same day Perry Lakes ended my employment.

Two days later, on Friday 21 August, my phone rang.

A member of the Cairns Basketball Board wanted to talk.

Nothing is guaranteed. A conversation is not an appointment. An interview is not a contract. A promising opportunity can disappear very quickly.

I know that better than most.

But I would be lying if I said the possibility does not excite me.

I am pumped by it.

Cairns represents something completely different again: the tropics, a regional community, and a basketball organisation with its own identity, challenges and opportunities.

After spending so much of my basketball life around Melbourne and then stepping into one of Western Australia’s biggest associations, there is something genuinely exciting about the thought of taking that experience into a regional environment.

Regional sport feels different. An association is not simply somewhere people turn up on game night. It becomes part of the community.

People know each other. Families grow up around clubs. Volunteers matter. Relationships matter. When things are going well, everyone celebrates together. When things get hard, people wrap their arms around each other.

In Far North Queensland, that is not just a sporting metaphor. Tropical communities live with cyclones, floods, storms, damaged homes, disrupted businesses and roads that can be cut off.

When those things happen, communities do not get through them because somebody writes a strategic plan. They get through them because people help each other.

That resonates with me.

Probably more now than it would have two years ago.

I know something about what it means to be knocked down. I know what it feels like when circumstances suddenly change the direction of your life. I know the value of people who do not disappear when things become uncomfortable.

I could bring big-city basketball experience, commercial thinking, governance, operations, competition structures, participation growth and everything I have learned from Bulleen and Perry Lakes.

But I would also be walking into a community with plenty to teach me.

As I write this, Cairns is only a possibility.

Five days ago, one Board decided my future with its organisation was over.

Tonight, another basketball conversation has already begun.