Basketball WA Competitions Manager Christian Rice says the Albany Basketball Association has made significant progress in its quest to return to the State Basketball League.

The Albany Raiders competed in the league until 1999 and are attempting to return, although the SBL Commission has set no timeframe for it.

But Rice said all discussions between the SBL and ABA had been positive and it was 'definitely' a possibility that Albany would be back in 2013.

"The Albany Basketball Association have made some progress in terms of establishing an official committee to oversee the discussions with the SBL over the license," he said.

"Things are certainly progressing and they're looking at their business plan now to present to the SBL Commission shortly. There's certainly a lot of activity happening.

"They need to satisfy all of the criteria and once they do satisfy that the Commission is prepared to look at the timeframes that are appropriate for them on and off court.

"There's certainly no discounting 2013, anything is a possibility if they pull all of the pieces together. But there are obviously some questions about their ability to be able to put that together in such a short timeframe.

"We'd also need to discuss this with our current license holders and we'll be consulting them throughout this process."

The potential return of Albany would give the SBL a far greater regional reach than any other Western Australian sporting competition, with representatives already from Goldfields, Geraldton, South West and Mandurah.

Rice said adding to that would be a positive thing for the sport state-wide.

"It just expands the footprint of the State Basketball League and basketball in general throughout the WA regions," he said.

"It's one of our strongest points and it would help to expand the league in that regard and commercialise the sport of basketball."

Rice said the ABA was 'very open' to fielding both men's and women's teams, but it was more likely Albany would just compete in the MSBL originally.

That would take the MSBL to 15 teams and Rice emphasised that wouldn't threaten any other club.

"There's no plans to contract the competition if Albany were to be a part of the league," he said.

While Albany could have regular SBL in the near future, it will miss out on the chance this weekend as plans for Perth and Mandurah to play there had to be abandoned.

Rice said while that was unfortunate, it wouldn't harm Albany's SBL bid.

"This was just a simple case of Perth not being able to access the funding that they've been able to access before. It wasn't financially viable for them to do that," he said.

"Obviously it isn't ideal for the ABA to miss out on showcasing the SBL in that region and to show the league they're capable of running an SBL game night but it won't set them back too much. It won't be too detrimental."

Article by Jacob Kagi

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