Cairns Taipans: is this the end?
Posted by Ashley Proud on December 9, 2008
After having an awesome middle session with my year 5 class on podcasting, I open up my email account eating my lunch and scroll through my usual crap. I then decide to go to Ozhoopsboards and I noticed this topic about the Cairns Taipans being put into adminstration. This was not good news people and I let my year five kids know. One kid said to me “What does that mean?” When I told him that means that the team could go under and not finish the season, his response was “That is pretty crap!” An honest but blunt response!
I then found this article which also talks about the current situatioin. The thing that ticks me off about this whole situatioin is this quote:
He said the club was losing “hundreds of thousands” of dollars each season
If this is the case (and I am not doubting that it is) then why is he continuning to pump money into the team? To me it smells a little bit more of a conspiracy theory. I think that they were given the word that there was only going to be one team from Far North Queensland in the NBL next year and they just decided to pull the pin now. I think that this is so irresponsible of the owners to allow the situation to develop into this type of a situations.
In the above article it is also quoted that the Taipans are losing $800 000 a season! If this is true, what the hell is going on? $800 000 is not just a tax write off for some rich man. That is a hell of a lot of money.
So once again the NBL is back to the drawing board. They saved the Spirit and what will they do now if they can’t find a new owner? Has a precendent been set? It will be interesting to say the least. Lets not make any bones about it – Sydney is much more important to the NBL than Cairns. I love the Taipans and they have awesome fans, but they don’t have 4 million people.
Will Nathan Jawai be able to chip in some money like Andrew Bogut did to make sure that his former team mates are getting paid? The smartest man in this entire scenario is former assistant coach Aaron Fearne. I am not sure who is paying Aaron (the Raptors or Nathan himself) but at least he still has a job. Alan Black could be without one very very soon!
December 10th, 2008 at 2:09 am
Ashley, you didn’t know most NBL team’s are losing money hand-over fist every season? I had this discussion with friends after the Blaze game and there are likely 3 teams at most that are breaking even at the moment.
Unfortunately you don’t buy an NBL team to make money. If you do, you’re a fool.
I think your conspiracy theory is a little off on this occasion … its just another team hitting the wall financially in a time of economic slowdown. Don’t forget the Tigers almost did a few years back and the Hawks were almost gone half-way through last season.
Fingers crossed teams survive and the league regeneration works next season.
Dodge
December 12th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
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