Shepparton Masters Tournament 2012

Shepparton Sports Precinct, Shepparton, Vic.
5th & 6th May 2012

I love the Myths & Legends association. It was set up to allow basketballers of yesteryear like me to continue playing well into our forties, even our fifties and for some Buzz Lightyear types, well into 'infinity and beyond.'


Without doubt, much of the enjoyment of course comes from playing competitive basketball at an age where convention suggests we should have stopped. But after my second tournament, I'm starting to understand that there's a bit more to it than that. This is a tight knit basketball family that has been years in the making, where more than sixty friends, wives and family will turn out for the Saturday night tournament dinner. This is a competition where there are more smiles than foul play, where airballs are met with laughter, and where blocked shots are booed like pantomine villains. This is a chance for four blokes from Melbourne to go on a forty eight hour, four hundred kilometer road trip to Shepparton, in the heart of country Victoria.  

Don't be fooled that all this talk of laughter and friendship means that the teams don't take it seriously, or that the players don't play hard, or don't care about winning: far from it. Our whole dinner discussion on Saturday night was focussed on how to win Sunday's final, before we had even qualified.

There's also an age handicap system to keep all the games competitive. So if the average age of your team is fifty two, and your opponents is forty five, then you get a seven point start from the off. Seems only fair to me, and whilst a few baskets might not sound much of an advantage over younger legs, in these shortened games (twenty minutes each way with running clock), it can be tougher than you think.   

And then there is the incredible physical challenge, with five games inside twenty four hours.  I haven't played that kind of schedule since I was seventeen, and it hurts. After the first three games on Saturday, I almost fell asleep into my beer.

It felt a little better that we had won two out of three games though, which wasn't a bad start. We had what you might call an experienced team with an average age of around fifty, and what we missed in athletic ability, we more than made up for with skill and craft. And a lazy man's offense built on three pointers of course.  We had a shocking semi final performance on Sunday morning, narrowly scrapng through, but it all came together in the final for me and the team, and we won by ten. Thankfully I had justified my selection by bagging a twenty point game, including three early three pointers which had killed them off at the start.   




On a final note, the official name for this tournament was actually "the Myths & Legends Over 40s Basketball Tournament Aged Handicap Event". I'm sure you'll understand why I preferred to shorten it to the Shepparton Masters.