THE 2012 men's SBL champion Cockburn Cougars missed making the playoffs in 2013 in their championship defence but coach Stephen Charlton is confident his team can be back up as a contender again in 2014.

With the likes of the emerging Gavin Field and Damien Scott led by stars Brian Carlwell and Jeremiah Wilson, the Cougars romped to the 2012 SBL championship with a thumping 33-point grand final win over the East Perth Eagles.

However, Cockburn couldn’t quite back that up in 2013 missing out on the playoffs.

The Cougars did find some spark towards the end of the season going on an impressive winning streak, but in the end they ran out of gas losing their last three games to finish up on a 10-16 record to close the season in 10th position.

In response, the Cougars have chosen not to re-sign Carlwell coming into the 2014 season with Anthony Borden signed as his replacement.

Charlton is making no secret coming into the new season that Cockburn is obviously aiming to return to the playoffs in 2014, but he also knows that is going to be far from easy to pull off.

"The 2014 SBL season brings a lot of challenges us, the main one being to improve on 2013 and return to the playoffs. And this is going to be a difficult task for a number of reasons," Charlton said.

"For I see the 2014 season potentially being the most even that I can remember. I'm sure we say that every year, but it seems like all the teams from outside last year's playoffs have improved.

"We're very young (outside a couple of veterans), but feel that we have a great chance to improve on last year with this group and have an exciting 2014."

Charlton likes the look of his squad assembled ahead of the new season as well even after the decision was made to go from two import players to just the one.

That decision has led to the signing of Borden, though, and Charlton is looking forward to seeing him in action alongside the likes of Scott, Field, Steven van Lit, Seva Chan, Alex Prince, Adam Nener and some impressive youngsters.

"For us we are also going down the path of trying to improve, whilst going from two restricted players in 2013 to one in 2014. That has lead us to sign exciting first year professional Anthony Borden to fill this role for us," Charlton said.

"Alongside our home grown starters of Damian Scott and Gavin Field that are or have been Wildcats DPs, we feel we have a good base for the season. With the returning local group of Steven Van Lit, Seva Chan, Alex Prince as our core plus the inclusion of Adam Nener, we feel we have a nice balance.

"Chuck in youngsters Jaarod Holmes, Rhys Vague and Matt Vinci and we think we have a good balance of today and tomorrow in the team. Also we have 2 guys returning from knee surgeries.

"Guy Arrowsmith injured himself in the first game last year and has worked hard to be back and Adam Nash injured himself in the last regular season games of 2012 while playing for the Suns. He also back. Both guys have trained well through pre season and look ready to offer us further flexibility for 2014."

Cockburn's 2014 season begins this Friday night against the Kalamunda Eastern Suns at Wally Hagan Stadium.

Article by Chris Pike