Only a few questions and I know I might be shot down by some Sturt and Forestville people in this forum but I am going to raise them anyway.

I applaud the two clubs trying something new and trying to develop basketball in this state. The big issue here is does SA have the local population to support such an idea? Let's say that the 10 district clubs run a domestic competition and they have between 35-40 teams in the district comp and the same in the domestic competition. Personally I think 40 would be an ideal number for district basketball. That is approx 400 district teams and 400 domestic teams. So if you work that out on 8 players per team basis, that is over 6,400 players involved in domestic and district basketball at a junior level in SA. Do we have the population do support such a competition?

I can also see the vision that the Domestic competition has by trying to have some sort of structure to how players begin in the sport to making at the top end. Basketball has mini ball, Aussie hoops, school ball, church, domestic, district, SASI, ABL and then NBL/WNBL. Would this including another step make the path way to great or would we lose more players in the system that is not stream lined? Football has Aus-kick, school ball, club football, district football then various state leagues and AFL. Very simple with very little being lost in the system. Maybe the idea would be to develop a stronger school competition and have feeder school into district clubs?

Does the revenue go to BASA or the clubs?

Not trying to take a cheap shot at the domestic idea as it is good to see some fresh ideas come to the SA basketball scene, just trying to put some points forward for discussion.

Rite, these are some very good questions/issues.

Whether SA can support a thriving domestic competition at each of the 10 member clubs is a question that noone will agree on. I believe that we can support such a structure, as I believe that there is a market of potential players that we are not currently servicing - those that want the structure, development and potential pathway of district basketball, but without the 3 time a week commitment. There is a large number of players (particularly those aged 13-17) who fall into this category.

Many people are not convinced that
this structure is feasible in SA due to our population size. My response is that not only is it feasible, it is already happening. Forestville and Sturt aren't pioneers here - the Southern Tigers already run a domestic competion (the Southern Conference) at Morphett Vale, and there is a domestic competition run at Mt. Barker (albeit not run by the Mavs). Forestville and Sturt made the decision to join forces, to create a viable competition, and there's no reason other clubs couldn't do the same thing.

Your question about pathways is a good one, and this is one of the benefits of a domestic competition. You're right - there are already a number of basketball "products" in SA, but the value of a domestic competition is that it is run by the clubs, and provides a clear and direct pathway into district basketball. BASA and the clubs have found it difficult to get flow through from Aussie Hoops and miniball into district basketball, and domestic competitions should bridge this gap.

Having said that, the basketball pathway in SA is still overly complicated. We've been working with BASA on this (and will continue to do so) so will hopefully be able to come up with a system which is clearer for those new to the sport.

The revenue for the City South domestic competition goes to the clubs, however BASA benefits financially via money for court hire and player registrations. Lets not forget that BASA is owned by the member clubs, so all clubs are already benefitting from this, not to mention that more players playing basketball is of benefit to everyone.

Rite and others,

After completeing my year Scholarship at the AIS, it will be my job when I am back in Adelaide next year to help run the Domestic Competition on behalf of Sturt.

Thank you for your support. You do have some good questions. Let me try and answer them as well as I can.

I agree that around 40 BASA teams is best for clubs. But currently we have many more players wanting to play at a level above that of Social/School/Church, and it would be bad for basketball to turn them away under the current system. Ideally a compeitition run by clubs would be able to provide a higher level of coaching, refereeing and player development due to our clubs having many of the
higher level people from these postitions. I like the idea of 40 domestic teams. But currently Knox Association in Melbourne has 135. And they are only 1 club. You look at 6400 players for our City and that is actually less than Dandenong (again only 1 club) in Melbourne has in it's Association.

With regards to the development pathway. I would see the domestic compeittion assisting to provide a different alternative to school and church basketball. Because not all kids go to schools with a team. Not all kids understand how to get involvd with a church team. What I hope we provide is a high quality entrance level for players into basketball. Which has a direct path into the District Competition. Currently we do this, but due to the lack of a compeittion for these players to play in we run them in the div 3 and below BASA Compeititions. In my experience we loose a large number of these players due to cost and travel. Hopefully a domestic comeptition will be lower cost and less travel than the BASA comeptition but still maintian the high standard.

The revenue of the compeitition will go to the organiser of the compeition. However as we are using BASA courts we will be paying court hire to BASA. As the compeitition grows hopefully we are able to maximise the court usage at BASA stadium, thus assisting in increasing revenue for the Associaiton. But also we hope to be able to decrease the costs for those players involved in the compeititon as well as in the long term to build more stadium for an increase in compeititon size.

I will be back in Adeladie mid December and will be happy to answer any question with a simple call to the Sturt Office.

Some basic questions:

1. Does a child need to be part of Sturt or F/Ville to compete?

2. Are teams put together outside of these clubs allowed to compete?

As of next term, the answer to both questions is no. The competition will feature a mixture of:
- Sturt and Forestville district teams
- Sturt and Forestville domestic teams
- teams which have no association with either Sturt or Forestville, other than that they play in our domestic competition

Both Paul's, some excellent points and something that not only myself, but the wider basketball community will find interesting.
I do see it happening around other areas but no offense to the Tigers, but the running of this competition is not yet to a standard that is viable for a professional outlook. Maybe the Tigers can be assisted with some ideas that are currently being used by Forestville and Sturt. Tigers have a wide area to run a very good domestic competition as they can cover the greater southern area.
Ok, the pathway in basketball is an important issue that has not fully been addressed by the clubs and BASA. I see valid points in the stream lining of the pathway but at this present point in time, it is very scattered. Mini-ball and Aussie hoops are an important part of introducing young players to the sport. For the domestic competition to work, I believe you need and Under 8 competitions with modified rules to have the younger kids play the game.
I see that the cost of the Domestic competition is much less then District basketball. I see the possibility that players will a lower economic background not ever playing District basketball as the parents will not pay the extra to play at the higher level. I see the reason to have a step between mini ball/school ball to domestic to district, but will players be lost due to the better competition the domestic comp will act as? Yes I know you will reply that district is the way to top level basketball and a better competition, but it is a question that is very difficult to answer. Some district clubs do sit in areas of a lower economic back ground with below average wage earners. Will the clubs in the above average areas benefit and grow stronger?
I think the Melbourne system is great, but we forget that the population is 4 times the size of Adelaide and sport is promoted heavily in the school system in Victoria. Our school system is SA does not promote sport in general to the extent that Melbourne does. So if we take the figures of 135 teams and reduce to the equivalent size in Adelaide, we only have 33 teams per club in the district competition. Will this number allow for the clubs to financially viable? Again I think, and I myself have done it above, we should not compare to the Melbourne system.
The revenue to BASA is not what I was trying to address, but the revenue to the clubs. Will the result of each club running a domestic competition, with the reduced district teams (ie. fees from players) increase the districts club revenue if they run a cap of teams at district and have a domestic competition? Yes each district club has one tenth ownership of BASA, but the financial state of BASA is not the best.
Again, I am not having a go at all at the idea; I am just trying to ask questions that may people would want to know more about before making the opinion that the domestic comp is the way to go for SA basketball.

More good points, Rite. I'll try and answer each of your points below.

I don't have much insight into the Southern Conference, other than it attracted over 150 players in 2003. This alone is an impressive effort, and I congratulate the Southern Tigers and Jason Balfour on getting this up and running.

I too see a need for an under 8 competition. Whether our competition expands to that age group is TBD. Regardless, I think the Aussie Hoops "Game Time" centres do an excellent job of servicing kids who are brand new to basketball.

Re players from lower socio-econmic areas, I actually think that domestic comps are most suited to this market, because one of the main benefits of domestic basketball over district basketball is that it is cheaper. Re good players chosing to play domestic instead of district, I actually think that the net effect of domestic copms on district numbers will be positive, even in these areas, because district-quality players who would otherwise have been turned away from district basketball , will have the chance to get a small taste of good quality basketball in domestic competitions, which will in turn make the (social, financial and time commitment) jump to district basketball less daunting. This is certainly a point for debate, but I genuinely think that domestic competitions will have a positive effect in these areas.

I agree that comparisons to Melbourne are difficult. I would point out, however, that your maths in dividing 135 (teams at Knox) by 4 (relative population of Melbourne to Adelaide) assumes that there would be as many domestic comps in Adelaide as Melbourne. This wouldn't be the case, because:
- there are less member clubs in Adelaide than associations in Melbourne
- it's not (in my opinion) vital that each club shoulder the burden of running a domestic comp alone. Forestville and Sturt are sharing the load at the moment, and even if our comp grows to a size that warrants separation, it might still make sense to run the comp jointly.

Re financial viability of the clubs, I'll speak from the point of view of Forestville, and would assume that most clubs would be in a similar situation. A large proportion of district fees go towards court hire of training venues. Any reduction in district teams would result in a reduction in court hire, and the reduced net loss due to loss of district players should be more than compensated for by the income from the domestic competition.

I'm not suggesting that all clubs should be reducing their district team numbers. Any reduction in district numbers also has a financial impact on BASA, and as the members clubs own BASA, this affects us all. However, I think that we can continue to support a 400 team district competition (ie, an average of 40 teams for each of the 10 member clubs, not counting non-member clubs), as well as thriving domestic competitions run by each club (possibly inconjunction with other clubs).

I have seen a few U16 kids give basketball away because they were embarassed with their lack of coordination and skills compared with the other players. The only problem with these kids is that the reason they were uncordinated and lacked skills was because they were 6foot4 ++ at 13/14 yrs of age.

It remains to be seen but I would think a domestic comp would be a good opportunity to get these kids playing and developing under the guidance of district coaches before making that step to district basketball.

Thanks for the feed back Paul. I first want to apologise about the Southern Conference. I hope it did not come across that it was a cheap swipe at the Tigers, I am just pointing out the fact that it has landed some un-happy people in the basketball community in the Southern area. I think what they are trying to achieve is excellent for the sport and community, it is just the direction is not as great as the South City Conference.

Your points with the lower socio-economic areas are an excellent point, but I was trying to highlight another issue. My point was that parents and players will be happy playing in the domestic competition by paying the lesser fees. This is giving new comers to the sport a false idea of the actual cost of district basketball. The domestic comp is a good way to have more players involved in the sport and the net effect I see to be a positive one. It is a concern that the sport does not lose the top grade of players due to financial hardship as they are happy with the competition in the domestic comp. The idea is to set up a better standard at all levels and try and improve the player entering the sport. It is simple maths that the more players available the higher the standard, therefore better SASI squads/teams better district competition. The better competition comes a tangible to the Sturt proposal for promotion and relegation in the district competition.

The assumption of the dividing by 4 is that the longer term idea behind a domestic comp is to have every district club having a feeder competition. I believe that by SA population and sport promotion in the schools, I could only see between 3-5 domestic comps being run in the metro area. This would make the simple number more viable for a high quality of basketball. From a personal point of view, I could not see the population supporting more then 5000 junior players. Basketball nation wide would have to make huge in-roads into other sports, especially football and netball. I do have participation rates per capita in the nation and state that make for interesting reading. The interesting outcomes from what I see are the increase in participation rate in sports such and tennis, golf and volleyball.

District clubs are facing increase with fixed cost not the variable cost of the sport. Stadium hires are on the increase, the push for greater commitment of junior development almost requires a minimum of a part time JDO/JDC and I could list other areas of clubs budgeting that requires increased funding. Do you see the domestic comps increasing revenue streams to the club more then if we include these kids into lower division district clubs?

The idea of a 400 team district comp is an excellent idea that should increase the standard of district basketball, provided we have each club participating in a domestic feeder competition.

Rite,

Regarding your socio-economic comment.

Dandenong has the largest domestic comp in OZ and that's a pretty rough area.( low income )

Thanks Rite. This response will be quick, as I'm about to leave work (I still have the gall to call it "work" :) ) for basketball.

I see what you are saying about financial hardship. My feeling is this - under the current model, those that can't afford district basketball drop out. Under the new model, they will still be able to play domestic. If there is a migration from district to domestic, I think this is the market of players who would have eventually dropped out of district basketball anyway.

I'm perhaps a bit more optomistic about the number of domestic competitions that Adelaide can support, but this, of course, remains to be seen. Even if we only had 5 dlub-run domestic competitions, this would go a long way towards defining a clear pathway into district basketball.

Re your question comparing revenue streams of domestic players versus district players, I think the success of the domestic model relies on it attracting more players than our lower level district competitions currently do, but not significantly more. Yes, the income stream into a club from a domestic players is significantly less than that of a district player, but so are the costs. In particular, less district teams means less external court hire, and this cost alone currently makes up a fair proportion of district subs.

I agree that higher domestic numbers will help improve the standard of the district competition. I also agree with the need for part-time/full-time JDOs/JCDs, and the need for us to do a better job of developing our players and coaches. I believe that domestic comps will help with all of the above and more.

each club needs to get a handle on school, mini ball and social comps in their catchments.

Ideally they could recruit / culktivate this as their breeding ground.

However BASA runs a lot of this already and city south appears to be one of the few tangents not covered already.

I remain to be convinced that a second game rather than training is benefical - but i support the concept.

Another concern is i do not want family basketball burn out. I suggest domestic comp is only run 4-6 months of the year.

just my 2 bobs worth.