What the hell is that sound? It is getting closer. I can’t
make it out. It sounds like … it can’t be … it sounds like a train!
That’s right … it is the C TRAIN! TOOOOOOT TOOOOOOOT! The C
Train was and is my favourite team for the Old Reds basketball club … and not
just cos I was on it. We were amazing.
We were an amazing team and it all pretty much came together
as a stroke of fortune – one thing after another just lined up.
I was captain of the C’s – I had run the C’s the year before
when we went on to win the title (over Mike’s Seaton team as you recall … I top
scored). The C’s had a few guys that needed to go up into the B’s – Brad Daniel
and Jay. Hendo, Pez and Matt Will went away and Cliffy went down to help the
D’s. So I was basically left with me and Flair. I needed to build a new team.
First move was I bought up 2 guys from the epic 2007 E’s –
BB (who was and is one of my favourite players in the club) and this character
called Yates (who I already covered … not romantically). With the B’s set – the
pool of guys that I could get was limited. I heard that Lachlan Griffiths (a
mate of Spangles) was keen for a run – he was an athletic 4 so I snapped him up
– Flair said he was a gun even though none of us had seen him play. Purge then
said that he had a mate that was keen – turned out to be Heath Jury. What I
didn’t know at the time was, he played ABA and was the current coach of the
Southern Tigers ABA side – our timeouts to him must have been farcical.
So I had 6 guys and 2 more spots left.
There was this goofy tall skinny kid who I seen the previous
year when he was in Year 12. He was all arms and legs and was always messing
around doing stupid reverse layups and weak dunks. He looked like trouble. When
he came into the club he had some ok skills so I thought I could use him … his
name was Josh Orken – everyone called him Orks. So that was it - I had 7 and I
needed one more.
About 6 weeks before the season started – the previous
year’s School Captain of basketball came out to training. When I asked Orks if
he was any good – he said he was kind of like Nic Blair. He waxed lyrical about
him for a while. When I saw him play I thought he was ok – but wasn’t great –
he was no Nic Blair. Then 30 minutes into training – he rolled his ankle. He
would miss the next 6 weeks of training. When it came to pick teams no one knew
if he was any good – so I rang him and told him he would be in the team with
me. He was cool with it – no whinging he was in the C’s – was just happy to be
in a team. The wraps on him were high but as I say no one had seen him play.
The first time I saw that kid play was the first game of the
season. We played the team that we would
go on to play in the Grand Final – he scored 17 and he hit a shot on the buzzer
to win the game. That was my introduction to guy known as “Captain” Jack
Harford. He was our best player by a
mile … probably as good as Blair too.
It was the best team to be on – we could score at will –
there was no one guy – it was all of us, we were so unselfish. There was no ego
– whoever was open shot the ball. Orks and Loky inside, Jack and Yates from the
perimeter, Heath was super smooth and could read the game so effortlessly
– BB, Flair and I chipped in where we
could. We won 8 games in a row and then we got word that Heath had to leave the
team. He had a back injury and couldn’t carry on.
A few weeks before this – Loky was bringing a mate to games
– he was this short guy with a little goatee. When Heath went down, Loky said
“my mate Brad can play”. So this dude Brad came into the team. What Loky failed
to tell us was … Brad was the best shooter in the history of basketball. Brad
scored 27 points in his first game. So now we went from a good team to a great
team.
At some point Yates had a 20 point game … I only mention
this for 2 reason … 1. He was so on fire he scored the 20 points in one half
and 2. It is the last good thing he did on the basketball court.
By the time that Brad had joined the team we had dubbed
ourselves “The C Train” because we were just rolling through the competition.
We would blow out teams, we would grind out wins, every week someone else
stepped up - I had two big weeks with back to back 16 point games. Jack even
said “I didn’t realise you could actually shoot”.
We had so much fun – most of our games were at 1pm. So we
rocked up early to shoot around and hang out. We stayed around after games when
you could still drink beers in the Mars caf. It was here I learnt that the tall
goofy kid called Orks was a comic genius and one of the funniest people I have
ever met. He started calling himself “Playa of the Week” – started his own
Facebook page about it too. It was here he also came out with the line “I was
at the Palace the other night and I saw the owner Tony Tripiano. He knows my
dad so I went up to him and said ‘hey Tony … you know my Dad … well I am his
son’”. I think I laughed for 5 straight minutes … the pure idiocy of it.
We won Intercol by 40 – which I think might be the biggest
win ever. Brad had 31 points and 9 threes.
In the Saturday season we won 19 straight games – we needed
to win one last game to go undefeated for the minor round but the longer the
streak went the more and more up tight we got. We lost our rhythm – I was a bit
grumpy with how we were playing and it started to affect the team. We dropped
the last game – a guy hit 2 free throws after the buzzer to win them the game.
We all agreed it was the loss we had to have.
We played the Qualifying final against Modbury (who are now
Dunn):
Coming off their only loss for the year the C’s
were determined to get their season back on track (ehh …
on track – a C Train metaphor …
get it?) Modbury would line-up with only 5 and the
Train would have 8 for the first time in 2 months. We
knew if we pushed and ran the ball Modbury would run out of legs. The first
half was good basketball – Modbury were making incredibly
difficult shots in the face of good defence and the C’s only
stayed in touch with hit 5 3’s
(from 5 different contributors). Half time 24 –
24. The second half we started to run a bit more and our pressure D from BB,
Brad, Yates and Jack started to prove too much. Brad hit
his 3rd 3 and Modbury had to stretch their
D to match up to all our shooters – this left Loky
inside one on one and he managed to get to the basket time after time. Our
offense still did not look great but was ok and our defence
inside in
the second half was great with Orken, Loky and Flair shutting down the Modbury
big guys. Great win guys and now we await the winner of Modbury v SPOC B.
The Grand Final … again was against Modbury:
Greeted
with the news that arguably Modbury’s 2 best players were not playing, the C’s
Train
knew
that all they needed to do was play a decent game of basketball and we would
come away with the chocolates … or so we thought. We got off to and 11 – 0 start and
were up 20 –
3 through 5 3’s from Brad. Modbury didn’t lie down – switch to a
3-2 and started to make some 3’s of their own and got it back to 20
– 17
… Game
On. At half time the score was 28 - 21 through some late baskets from Flair
and Jack and
we needed to lift our defensive intensity. The 2nd half we were in 2nd
gear and were really struggling to put together some decent offense. Yates then
stepped up and made 3 crucial baskets to get the lead to 8 with 3 minutes to
go. The lead went from 4
to 8 for
the next couple of minutes with Brad making 4 of 4 free throws. Jack then made
a massive 3 and 5 of 6 free throws and it was all over. We ended up winning by
10 but Modbury pushed us the whole way – they played really well and made 3’s
every time we threatened to pull away. As I told the boys this is not only the best team I have ever been a major part of but also the funnest team I have been on. Such a joy to rock up Saturdays and to play ball with these guys – we had a nice mix of young and old guys, rookies and older heads – to lose only 1 game was incredible.
The only blip is that one loss – it still annoys me.
That aside … we will always be The C Train … and Toot …
fucking … Toot – my favourite team ever.
PAOCBC Team Stats 2008
|
|||||||||||
Saturday C's
|
|||||||||||
Player
|
Games
|
Points
|
Pts Avg
|
FTA
|
FTM
|
FT%
|
3's
|
Fouls
|
FO
|
Hi
|
|
Altmann
|
14
|
208
|
14.9
|
16
|
13
|
81.3%
|
48
|
12
|
0
|
27
|
|
Griffiths
|
21
|
171
|
8.1
|
103
|
45
|
43.7%
|
0
|
53
|
0
|
16
|
|
Harford
|
17
|
159
|
9.4
|
40
|
33
|
82.5%
|
18
|
24
|
0
|
17
|
|
Orken
|
20
|
150
|
7.5
|
38
|
18
|
47.4%
|
2
|
40
|
0
|
15
|
|
Yates
|
19
|
146
|
7.7
|
28
|
11
|
39.3%
|
13
|
19
|
0
|
20
|
|
Palk
|
20
|
101
|
5.1
|
7
|
6
|
85.7%
|
25
|
12
|
0
|
16
|
|
Wong T.
|
19
|
48
|
2.5
|
16
|
5
|
31.3%
|
1
|
32
|
0
|
6
|
|
Jury
|
3
|
30
|
10.0
|
0
|
0
|
~
|
9
|
2
|
0
|
15
|
|
Collins
|
16
|
26
|
1.6
|
2
|
0
|
0.0%
|
2
|
26
|
1
|
4
|
|
Golding
L.
|
1
|
13
|
13.0
|
0
|
0
|
~
|
1
|
1
|
0
|
13
|
|
Donaldson
|
1
|
12
|
12.0
|
3
|
2
|
66.7%
|
0
|
1
|
0
|
12
|
Low
|
Totals
|
22
|
1064
|
48.4
|
253
|
133
|
52.6%
|
119
|
222
|
1
|
81
|
27
|
Opposition
|
665
|
30.2
|
46
|
16
|
|||||||
First Half
|
Avg
|
Second Half
|
Avg
|
||||||||
PAOCBC
|
585
|
26.6
|
508
|
23.1
|
Minor Round
|
Playoffs
|
|||||
Opposition
|
324
|
14.7
|
341
|
15.5
|
1st
|
Champions
|
|||||
Total
|
Streak
|
||||||||||
Wins
|
21
|
19
|
|||||||||
Loss
|
1
|
1
|
|||||||||
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