The Morning After, Time to Work

Thank you Newcastle Eagles Basketball Club. You did what you needed to do and without you we could be counting the costs of lost chances. But instead, now I'm trying to sort out potential chances to maximise the news from last night. We were away in Chester, beating the Jets for the second time this week and Newcastle is 350 miles away. We need to alert the local media.

After the game I had one of our larger sponsors come over with a bottle of dessert wine. He owns a big local haulage firm and had never seen a basketball game in his life until January. Now he's as bad as me. He sat hitting refresh in his own house last night. We had to celebrate our second chance at winning the league. Yes, we still have to beat London United tomorrow, but we've done that 3 out of 3 times already this season, we can do it again.

Andrew, another club director, was at home thinking up things for us to do today to build the picture in the media. We both went at it last night, texting the supporters we've started to make in town here. We've got 2 radio stations, one of which is a BBC network station and the other a pop-rock station called the Eagle. We've got one broadsheet local newspaper with about 100,000 circulation. I texted the assistant sports editor, Chris Dyke, last night with the news. He sounded genuinely into it. In fact, he's coming to the game tomorrow now. He came this past Wednesday too. That will make for him coming to 3 basketball games in 2 years. This is a serious improvement.

I texted the morning man on the BBC station and went to bed. Fred has since texted back saying he will call me and put me on the air. I should try to get PJ, our head coach to do the interview. Let me text him now. Done it, will wait a bit.

I texted Ben Moore from the BBC South TV last night; he used to play basketball as a kid and discovered us by accident a few months ago; he's done two pieces on us now. He sounded genuinely excited. I commanded him to come to the game tomorrow, our last of the season. The decider. It's Easter Sunday though. Not sure my 'command' went over that well...

In the midst of this I am sick as a dog; some chest cough that is turning into flu or something nasty. I really don't have the time for this.

On Monday evening I am catching the Eurostar train through the Channel tunnel to Belgium to go see the ULEB Cup Final; the second biggest competition in European basketball. I've managed to wrangle an invitation from Jordi Bertomeu's office; as a team, we are determined to play in Europe, in the ULEB Cup, as soon as possible. We want to be the biggest team in Great Britain. We want to compete. Seeing the game and meeting a few of the people from Euroleague, which run/own the competition would be a nice starting place. I don't think they have ever heard of the Guildford Heat.

I had barely even 7 months ago...why should they? They're in Barcelona and I'm here in town.

Eagles won last night 94-89. I think they led most of the way, but have also heard their lead went down to 1 with 15 seconds left. I am very glad I knew nothing of this and only got the final score. I'm not as young as I used to be. I'm 42 now. Bad things happen to good people. But as this is the case I should expect to live a lot longer.

Ticket sales should really pick up now for tomorrow's game. Easter Sunday at 3pm. Not so sure that was a good idea, BBL, but it will probably work for us now.

Our attendances, don't laugh, have doubled this season or at least gone up a third. I think the low point was 2 Christmas's ago with around 500 people to a game and now we are solidly drawing 1,000 people per match.

I've checked the online ticket system at the Spectrum and it looks like we've sold about 700 so far with a day to go. I think we will make 1,000 again.

The capacity is 1,400 in the Arena, but I have to say, I'm not so sure I'd want to be in that place with 1,400 people in it. It seems pretty packed with 1,100 in it.

We are lucky though in that Guildford Spectrum has a second playing surface in it; there's an ice hockey arena right next to the basketball arena. I am told that 15 years ago that Olympiakos from Greece came and played the long since defunct Guildford Kings there in a game and they got somewhere between 3,500 and 5,000 people into the room. 5,000 seems a bit of a stretch, I would think that closer to 4,000 would be possible.

This is our ambition. We can move into the big room for selected matches as we grow. It's there, we can see it every day. We want to be welcoming Real Madrid and Barcelona to Guildford.

They will want to come too. Guildford might as well be a part of Southwest London. We are only a 35 minute train or car ride from Piccadilly Circus. There are no other London clubs anymore that could otherwise do it, at least now. London Towers might come back, but it's just rumour. We are basically it, no offense to either London United, London Leopards or the Capitals. We outdraw all of them together at this point in time. But we want it to change for them too. We need local rivals.

I really feel the perfect storm brewing. But right now what I need to have brewing is a cup of coffee and to hear back from PJ to see if he can do this phone interview.

Barring that, I can run down to the BBC and do the interview myself. I hate phoners. They never sound as good as in-studio.

My college radio days at Seton Hall's WSOU served me well; two years there covering Big East basketball and playing music was the start of my career in the entertainment business. It's been a help with the media here. All good people here. We want to have the best of both worlds with the Eagle and the BBC. They appeal to almost totally different audiences so we can really make an impact and shouldn't annoy either party in the process. Shouldn't, but have...

More of this later. Time to work. Working for this club has turned out to be a 7 day a week job and even having spent 20 years in the music industry, I never worked 7 days a week.