Uh oh

no complaints from all 4 of us cairns fans.

And so it begins...

I was actually thinking of a post along the lines that things were going so well I was getting nervous.
And that with Matty Knight out of the picture the onus for a season-derailing injury fell completely on Martin.
:-(

Having Damo out really hurts the Cats but seeing Steindl play a little more will be interesting.

Will be interesting to see if Tokoto plays more at the point

I would still start Kenny but wouldn't give him more than 20 mins max.
Cotton can play point and that gives more minutes to Steindl and DKD.
Tokoto as point forward could work too.

I also remember Corban Wroe starting some games last year...yikes.
Looking forward to seeing Bragg get an opportunity.

Wroe only started when Martin and Kenny were both out injured at the same time.

Back against Melbourne

Nah, if you go back two seasons, Our Bench was Kenny, Hire, Redhage, Wagstaff, and Jervis. So yeah, Hire spent time at the 2.
No need for that with DKD, Steindl, and Bragg.

Kenny is actually a brilliant backup for Damo.
Cotton already carries the ball at times, that's the way Trev's offense works. No need to mess things up too much.

meh, I've moaned about it for years now. Cairns has by far the best crowds in the Nbl as a % of the total market. we average about 4k for most games (about 80% venue capacity) out of a population 150k. Higher average crowds than the Bullets and woolloongong.

So yes, to drag this back on topic all 4 of us Cairns fans will be giving martin-less wildcats a fine time on new years eve.

"meh, I've moaned about it for years now. Cairns has by far the best crowds in the Nbl as a % of the total market. "

Don't cream yourself too much over that stat too much.

Cairns is a team that needs to go begging to the local fish and chip shop to afford Jerry Evans Jr. Even the Sandringham Sabres could pay his wages through general revenue.

"woolloongong."

Don't do geography or English at school in Cairns.

FSTOS
The spelling of local Illawarra names often have no correlation to their pronunciation. Try to sound out local names phonemically from how they're spelt. No chance. If you’ve only heard the names, try to spell them with any degree of accuracy. Less than no chance. Some examples of local names:

Wollongong (pronounced locally as wool n gong)
Illawarra (pronounced locally as Ill uh war uh)
Wingecarribee (pronounced locally as whinge eh Carr u bee)
Shoalhaven (pronounced locally as shoal ay vn)
Dapto (pronounced locally as Dab doe)

I moved there from SA and needed to enrol in Illawarran as a second language classes. Now I have to contend with Tumblegum (pronounced locally as Tm Boll Gum).

Local name pronunciations are weird. You can’t blame people for not getting it right if they don’t know the local dialect.

again, meh. the autocomplete on my POS Chinese phone says it's woolloongong so woolloongong it stays.

Hire is a 3/4, maybe a bit like an older style SF, and yet has consistently been played out of position for the past few years. That should have changed with DKD and now Steindl, but neither of those is measuring up.
But yes, we need to see him lift his production, back to where it was a few years back.

Realistically, I don't see DKD staying, especially if Steindl is signed on for next season.
Every year there's young guys come back from college, but most are from lesser teams and aren't really NBL quality. Still happy for the Wildcats to keep looking and give young guys a go. The extra year allowed for DPs should help, but Australia doesn't seem to produce many guards??

Is Martin playing on NYE, or not?

From a basketball perspective, I hope so. As a Taipans fan, I hope not.

5, CT, I'm pretty sure it's 5 Taipans fans on here.

UP THE 'PANS

DOWN WITH THE 'CATS

The impression I get is no, Martin won't play. It was originally said that he won't be back till next year, and he's still training away from the rest.

Front court has been doing ok, but gees, without Walker's incredible turnaround we'd be struggling. Also Brandt has fallen off the pace. Hasn't been the same since "illness" forced him out of the boomers side.
Plus need some consistency from Wagstaff.