Molloy coaching coup for Miners

By David Brehaut and David Polkinghorne
Updated November 2 2012 - 12:04pm, first published July 22 2009 - 12:29pm
NEW CHALLENGE: Guy Molloy checks out the Minerdome yesterday before taking charge of the Ballarat Miners at the end of the season.
NEW CHALLENGE: Guy Molloy checks out the Minerdome yesterday before taking charge of the Ballarat Miners at the end of the season.

EXPERIENCED NBL mentor Guy Molloy will coach the Ballarat Miners for the next three South East Australian Basketball League seasons.In an all-encompassing role, Molloy will also oversee Ballarat Basketball's development program as elite performance manager.Molloy, 43, will take the baton from Leigh Gooding as RetireInvest Ballarat Miners head coach at the end of this season, which has just three games remaining. Gooding has been in charge since mid-way through the season, having stepped in when Ballarat Basketball Club sacked Shane Mathison, who was in his second year in the job.Molloy said phone calls to former Miners coaches Brian Goorjian and Alan Westover, the current Melbourne Tigers coach, had convinced him it was the right move."The last five or six years have been pretty lean by historical standards for Ballarat, certainly not the same as the glory days back in the '90s and looking at the roster at the moment, talent wise, the cupboard's a lot barer than it used to be," he said."There's not a quick fix on that but I think it is an exciting time for me to try and find some of the younger players that can really move forward and get them playing the style of basketball that can really help them get somewhere."Securing Molloy is a major coup for the total Ballarat basketball community, with him boasting an outstanding background in the sport.He is the existing Australian under-18 men's coach and will lead the national team into next year's world championships in Germany in July but does not see that as a problem."It won't be a major conflict with anything here. We'll have to look at the SEABL program and maybe move a game or two around," Molloy said.He joins the Miners after three years as an assistant coach at the South Dragons, which took out the 2008-09 National Basketball League title under Brian Goorjian.Molloy was head coach of the Cairns Taipans in the NBL for four years before that. BBC president Nick Grylewicz said Molloy was a significant appointment."He'll mentor all our coaches and provide a service here during the day where he can work with the elite players in those programs - so future stars will have the best coach available to develop their game," Grylewicz said."That's something we haven't had in the past and we think that's a really good investment for basketball in Ballarat." Molloy's position includes the implementation and monitoring of performance standards and coaching strategies for all Ballarat elite teams.He will oversee the integration of Ballarat Basketball's elite programs from under-12 to senior level, for players and coaches, having total responsibility for setting the culture and disciplines of the Ballarat Basketball coaching program. Molloy starts the new position late next month.

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