Melbourne United

The Day After

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It’s been a day since the Cairns Taipans gave United the fatal bite to ensure the team didn’t make the NBL Finals sparking off celebrations from different teams across the nation.

Melbourne Tigers fans as well as Adelaide and Perth fans are today likely to be found struggling to shake off the effects of a night of celebration that began long before the final whistle of last nights play, these celebrations may impact many people’s Valentine’s Day plans.

For Tigers fans it was a sweet result against United’s money over tradition and loyalty owners while for Adelaide and Perth fans they are celebrating knowing there is absolutely no chance United could overtake either side even if the odds of Melbourne making the finals were extremely large before tip-off last night.

South Dragons supporters today couldn’t help but noting that they made the finals in their first season while the Tigers and United couldn’t which will most likely not win them any fans in their attempt to re-enter the NBL and instead send fans to the South East Melbourne Magic camp instead.

Detractors to the South Dragons supporters comments could say that the NBL was a lot tougher in 1984 (Tigers) and this year (United Ballers) while the Dragons era was in the middle of an NBL collapse which ironically lead to the Dragons falling on their sword instead of choosing to stay and fight in the NBL or go to SEABL.

Meanwhile The Age has reported that D-Mac is still hoping to be coach next season, D-Mac has not had the opportunity to coach a side with a lineup of his choosing (stories are that he was unhappy with the 2014/15 lineup) and is hoping it is third time lucky, standing in the way of his appointment is his interim record and the fact that former Melbourne Tigers player and multiple NBL team coach Brian Goorjian is wanted by many in the United Ballers camp to be the man picked for the 2015/16 season.

Goorjian is known for being a successful coach with all but two seasons of his NBL coaching seasons spent in the NBL finals but he is also known for being in charge of NBL clubs when they merged or died, Teams in this list were the Eastside Spectres, South East Melbourne Magic, Victoria Titans, Sydney Kings and South Dragons with only the Kings so far rising from the dead.

Melbourne Tigers fans are reminded that the juniors seasons are now underway and we wish them the very best as we continue to countdown towards the beginning of the 2015 Big V season, there is no doubt that things are a lot sunnier for Tigers fans than they were just 48 hours ago.

Maury

United Ballers got Crocodile Rocked

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The eyes of the majority of Australia were focused on the Australian Open last night but not far away from the action at Hisense Arena, Melbourne United Ballers discovered that despite all of Townsville’s problems in recent seasons they can bite hard and so the United Ballers fell to Townsville 81 to 69.

The loss hurt United Ballers more when hours earlier Adelaide smashed Sydney to keep pace with and then pass Melbourne United Ballers into fourth spot which is the last finals spot.

The situation is that Adelaide must hold on to their one win advantage over Melbourne United Ballers for if the two sides finish equal in wins then United Ballers will get through based on outscoring Adelaide in their matches this season.

Melbourne Tigers fans unhappy with Melbourne United Ballers have never been more grateful to Adelaide and Townsville and hope that other NBL teams have equal success against United Ballers to shut the team out of the finals and prove that a name, culture and history change doesn’t do a thing when the side can’t make the finals.

United claims state for Heritage Round

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Melbourne United Ballers this morning posted an image of Daryl Corletto from 2002 in Melbourne Tigers gear with the caption ‘Circa 2002: Kicking off Heritage Round with this Melbourne youngster!’ leading fans to speculate the team was returning to the Tigers for the game against Townsville.

Hours after this post, Melbourne United Ballers revealed that they will be wearing 1953 Victorian state jerseys in a move that has puzzled Basketball lovers from around the country, this isn’t the first time United have chosen state gear with pre-season matches played in Victorian colours due to the team not having their jerseys launched at that time.

Imagine if Collingwood, Carlton or any of the other Victorian teams played say Port Adelaide in Big V gear with their justification being that because some of their players played for Victoria as kids they can wear the Big V for the AFL game, nobody would buy that for a second because although Collingwood etc are in the state of Victoria they are not the state team and cannot claim to be that team at any time.

One more thing to consider is that with a second Victorian team looming in the distance could Melbourne United Ballers be trying to do good for the state now so they get a head start on state opposition when they arrive? The team is based in Melbourne, want to play in Ballarat and wears state jerseys for Heritage round, what more could they do to say that are wanting the entire state?.

The big losers from all this is the Melbourne Tigers fans, first Melbourne United Ballers owners took away the Tigers name and history then they disregarded the five retired numbers that hung proudly at home games by allowing their players to wear them and now they bypass direct history, is there anything more United Ballers want to take away from the fans?.

Wildcats take win against United in O/T finish

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The Wildcats had runned and stunned and had some nerve racking fun with the Melbourne United Ballers today winning in overtime 81 to 80, the Wildcats haven’t had a great time against The United Ballers this season and they would of went home empty handed had a last ditch shot by the United Ballers to score the winner went in but to the delight of the Red Army it missed and the win was Perth’s.

The Melbourne United Ballers at last had a crowd in the 6000’s which will no doubt make the front office of the team happy after crowd totals in previous games hung around the 5000 mark which is lower than the Tigers average at Hisense Arena during the 2013/14 season.

The Melbourne United Ballers next game is against the Sydney Kings in Sydney which will no doubt be a game of interest with Josh Childress sure to be playing this time, it is expected that Childress will give Sydney a good chance of the Kings avenging their loss to the United Ballers last week.

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Dragons roar to 800 likes

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Save Our South Dragons Facebook page has passed 800 views thanks to a mention in The Age, the group had 528 members before The Age on December 10 published a story mentioning the South Dragons and the group which lead to the rapid increase in likes.

The group has some way to go to catch Melbourne United who have 35,000 likes although the majority of those were from the days the page was run for the Melbourne Tigers, South East Melbourne Magic currently has 610 likes while Melbourne Tigers fans are discussing opening a fan page in the near future.

Save Our South Dragons hope that the increase in likes continues and that the page enters four figure likes real soon to ensure that the NBL really knows that there is great interest in the revival of the former NBL team.

United fall to the 36er’s and the Breakers

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Melbourne United have had a horror couple of days by losing to the Adelaide 36er’s in Adelaide on Friday night 90 to 77 and then losing today to New Zealand Breakers 92 to 87 at Hisense Arena.

United fouled ten times in the last period in a bid to stop the Breakers with McRae, Kickert and Barlow being fouled out of the game in the late stages, even with the fouls United briefly snatched the lead in the final minute before New Zealand got away to record the five point win.

The Sydney Kings will no doubt be thankful to New Zealand for beating United after the Kings blew a chance keep pace with United by losing to Wollongong 82 to 77.

SEABL plan reportedly fails

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Melbourne Tigers hopes have reportedly been dashed with reports from Brad Simpson that the 2015 season draw has already been finalized, earlier today we speculated that it was possible Melbourne Tigers could of replaced the Knox Raiders in the competition but it seems negotiations between the Tigers consortium and SEABL (and possibly Melbourne United) did not reach a satisfactory conclusion.

There are no details on why it has failed but it could be anything from the consortium unable to get a compromise from Melbourne United, the Tigers did not raise enough money for SEABL or SEABL did not want the Tigers in at this time plus an array of other options.

If this report is true this news is no doubt a result the Tigers fans were not hoping for but the supporters will bounce back and support the team in the BigV competition as the march continues towards getting the team back towards top level basketball.

Tigers fans watch Melbourne battle with interest

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Tigers fans have been watching the news about the SE Melbourne Magic and South Dragons bids to enter the NBL with interest for it has the potential to give fans a team to support in the NBL whilst the Tigers are on the sidelines.

This does not mean that Tigers fans will be buying Magic or Dragons memberships by the dozen as the majority asked in ‘Save The Melbourne Tigers’ have answered that they will wait for the Tigers to rejoin the competition instead of joining one of the two bids.

Fans have also stated strongly that they don’t mind which team gets in because they’ll get to beat Melbourne United, this could bode well for the incoming team for they will be looking to set up something special against their cross city rivals.

Tigers fans have overwhelmingly voted no to joining the CTI Melbourne United Ballers ranks with no votes recorded on the option, this does not bode well for United who are no doubt hoping those NBL fans who are supporters of the Tigers but dislike the thought of the Magic or the Dragons back in the NBL will join Melbourne United instead.

We Are Not United wishes both bids the best of luck and will be continuing to report on the outcome of their efforts when the news comes to hand.

The media still doesn’t like the name Melbourne United

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It’s been six months since the announcement that Melbourne United was the new name of the club that for the last 30 years was known as the Melbourne Tigers (80+ if you count the still continuing mother club) and the media is still having trouble getting the team’s name right.

It’s now Round 9 of the NBL season and today radio station Gold 104 called the team ‘Melbourne City’ in their news update, NBL commentators have been heard calling the team Melbourne Victory and the Melbourne Tigers and there is still plenty of rounds to go to call them the names of other Melbourne teams scattering throughout the sporting world such as the Melbourne Storm, Melbourne Demons, Melbourne Stars, Melbourne Aces, Melbourne Mustangs and the Melbourne Vixens.

To add to the confusion, Melbourne United themselves call the team in some promotional material the ‘CTI Melbourne United Ballers’ which is seen as an attempt to connect the mascot (Mr Baller) with the team name to connect with young fans and the team has also been introduced as the Ballers as they come out onto the court which makes fans and the generally curious wonder if they are the Ballers or United.

This proves that choosing United as the name was a very bad idea and there is no doubt that clubs around Australia will not be hiring the people who conducted the research that said United was a good name to replace the successful Tigers name, Tigers fans hope that when the Tigers make it back to the NBL as a separate entity they won’t be mistaken for Melbourne United.

Number crunching proves United not making gains

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We Are Not United have crunched the numbers between the Tigers last four regular season games and United’s first four regular season games at Hisense and have found that the Tigers had larger numbers of attendance.

By counting the 2013/14 Tigers four regular season games at Hisense plus one final the total is 30,552 people for an average of 6110.4 so that’s 6110 people per game when rounded down while Melbourne United’s first five regular season games have had a total of 23,773 people for a total of 4754.6, rounded up to 4755 people per game which means the Tigers had 6,779 more people and a bigger average per game of 1355 people.

Now if we take only the four Tigers regular season games and exclude the finals they had 26,551 for an average of 6637.75 rounded up to 6638 while United’s first four regular season games at Hisense had a total of 20,366 at an average of 5091.5 so comparing the averages the Tigers are on top by 1547 people which proves that no matter which way you slice up the numbers the Tigers have had a superior turnout.

Melbourne United may claim a superior season overall attendance over the Tigers at the end of the season but it should be noted that the Tigers played 10 games at the smaller The Cage and only four games at Hisense with none at Margaret Court Arena compared to United who play the majority of their season at HA and MCA.