Glasgow Rocks coach Gareth Murray says it’s a relief to finally have fixtures to look forward to – but says they’re still going into the season without assurances.
Rutherglen man Murray says the BBL Cup games are being used as a tester for when or if the British Basketball League starts, as teams in England are having to deal with new lockdown restrictions, and Rocks are still waiting for government cash to take them forward.
Games will, of course, be played without fans.
But he says having an opening fixture against Cheshire Phoenix at the Emirates on Sunday is finally a bit of light at the end of a long tunnel.
“Eventually we get to play some basketball – hopefully,” he said.
“We actually have a date that we can work towards.
“Over the summer time it was really a struggle, we didn’t know if we would be playing basketball this year, if the season would start or be cancelled – nobody knew what was going on.
“Now we actually have a date to work towards and that gave us three weeks to prepare,which gave us more motivation and encouragement.
“It has been almost eight months since our last game, but we’ve had contact practice for two weeks, so we’re starting to look a little bit better and everything’s starting to fall into place a little bit, so it’s looking good.”
Nevertheless, there are a few things that do need to be ironed out before the season can properly start.
Rocks face Phoenix in Cheshire on November 22, and then travel to Manchester Giants on November 27, before hosting them two days later.
That’s all that is in the calendar for now, because there’s no guarantees that even those will be played.
Murray said: “They want to get this cup done and out the way first, and hopefully they won’t have too many cancelled games.
“There have been a couple of games cancelled already, but they’re just trying to get those done and then they’ll work on the scheduling for the league fixtures.
“With the lockdown in England, everyone needs to secure their arenas or facilities when they’re practicing, so there’s a little bit of back and forward with that.
“We still don’t have fans coming in, we’re still waiting for that government money to be assigned to us. I know they have a lot of meetings and things like that, but we’re still waiting for that money to go through.
“We’re kind of starting at a risk, we have no assurances really, and playing without fans is going to be very different, obviously.
“I’ve seen a couple of games in places like the Copper Box Arena in London which usually has a few thousand people at the game, but that was empty.
“You can hear everything that’s going on.
“That’s going to be different for players as well because Glasgow fans are pretty loud and they get behind you and encourage you when you need them.”
“But hopefully everything’s looking good for continuing to play.”
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