Nope,
Everyone is entiteld to their opinion (you and AJ combined), however, allow me to retort on a factual basis to some of your statements:
"Alot of good individual players have come from sturt." - Correct weight and all clear
"On the whole they do a poor job at getting their players ready for the ABL." I am not sure what your factual basis behind this statement is. Is it that you believe that we dont have produce enough juniors to play in our senior teams? This is false, because on last glance our senior teams were made up of a majority of Sturt juniors.
Or is it that you feel that we do have juniors into our senior program but because they aren't ready for senior basketball the teams are not competitive? This is false as well, because results say that both teams have been consistantly competitive in recent memory, playing in numerous finals and winning championships.
"On the whole their teams dont seem to improve. By the time their current juniors get to 18s/20s everyone else will have caught up." By this I am guessing you mean that the teams we have excel at the U10 - U16 level and then come back to the pack in U/18s & U/20s. I'll have to defer to Darth Mesecke for exact data on this one, but on the girls side, the past few U/18 sides have achieved the same if not better results then what they did in U/14 & U/16s. Our U/21 Girls have also won state champs at least twice in the last five years.
On the boys side, we have gone through a cycle of teams at U/18 & U/20 level that havent been "super" groups. Having said that, they werent winning groups in their formative years either, so to say that they have "come back to the pack" is just completely untrue - they are the pack! The only exception is this years U/18 Div 1s who did not replicate their State Champion wins from U/14s & U/16s (they lost this year in the semi final to the 'time out scouting' Southern Tigers). So I guess if you want to make a broad statement on the back of one group then go right ahead...its just that it wouldnt be true.
"They work hard @ recruiting kids at U10/U12 level" - Again Correct Weight and all clear. BTW - how hard does your club work at this age level? How many teams do they have playing both district and domestically. What have been their results? I'd be very interested....
"but not so good at developing those kids." - I think our numerous Olympians, NBL & WNBL players, Australian Representatives (both Junior and Senior), AIS Scholarship holders and State Representatives would have something to say about that comment. In fact, if we were so poor at developing kids, why are we continually knocking back kids from other clubs who want to move to our club because they want an opportiunity to be developed. Furthermore, why arent our players leaving in droves from U/16s, U/18s and U/20s sighting a lack of development as a reason?
Nope, I am not sure if even Grisham could find the facts to back up your statements, but as previously mentioned, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
Enough of this banter, I need to move house with the help of my mate Jerry and then try and get to second base with Elaine....
