THIS was a defining moment in Al Westover’s coaching career – August 16, 1989.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
A young coach, fine-tuning his style, Westover led Ballarat Miners into a Victorian Basketball Association against the team coached by his mentor Lindsay Gaze – Melbourne Tigers, the most powerful and formidable club in Australian basketball.
Ballarat Miners were Westover’s first coaching job and this was a match no one outside Ballarat thought that his team could pull off.
Hype about the game is building again, one week out from the Miners’ 25-year reunion when players will gather to reminisce, moment-by-moment, on the game in a gala dinner.
“The game itself is a bit of a blur,” Westover told The Courier, on reflection this week.
“The court was jam packed and everyone was spilling out on to the court. The whole crowd was behind us.
“Their chant, “Miners” then clap, clap, clapping – that will stay in my mind forever.”
Ballarat Miners claimed a six-point victory, having led by two points at half-time and with scores all tied up at the final break.
The Miners were the first country team to win the VBA championship – a mid-week competition that pit the state’s National Basketball League clubs against Victorian teams in the South East Australian Basketball League.
Melbourne Tigers were the juggernaut of Australian basketball, featuring the nation’s best player Andrew Gaze, who put up 35 points.
Victory put Ballarat Miners in the national spotlight.
“It’s hard to judge the impact it had on our club,” Westover said. “There were definitely extra expectations on us for the rest of the year.
“We still had to play out the SEABL season and we were kind of a marked team.”
The Miners did, however, secure a hat-trick by going on to collect the Country Victoria championship (without imports) and SEABL that year – a feat never achieved before and never achieved since.
More than 800 fans made the journey from Ballarat to crowd the court that night.
It was at the peak of Australian basketball.
There was little time for celebrations. Some players, like star American import Eric Cooks, featured in a horse-drawn “charge” up Sturt Street.
Then they got pummelled by a visiting American university team from Minnesota at the Minerdome a night later.
Westover said that VBA final reinforced a bond that would last forever. Before that, the way they clicked was the key to their success.
“We had an extraordinary group that gave 100 per cent, a very confident group,” Westover said. “The week before we beat Geelong, which was an NBL club, and we beat Bendigo, which won the SEABL the year before.
“Throughout that, we weren’t just a group happy to be playing, we were wanting to win.”
Westover said Cooks was the “heart and soul” of the team and Glenn White was an inspirational captain who never shied away from a contest, but every play on the roster was important.
He said the VBA was a chance for Ballarat players to really step up and test themselves against the nation’s best clubs.
Westover coached the Miners for four seasons before joining Melbourne Tigers as an assistant coach to Lindsay Gaze in 1992 and succeeding him in the Tigers’ head coaching from 2005-2011.
In a sense, it was a full-circle move for Westover, a Californian, who made his NBL playing debut with the Tigers in 1978.
His old coach Gaze, sought him out as the Miners’ celebrations erupted at Albert Park: “he was very complimentary after the game, Lindsay’s a real gentleman of sport”.
Westover remains heavily involved in the game as a coach with the Australian College of Basketball and will be overseas for a tournament when the Miners reunite on July 19.
