She’s the 202 centimetre championship-winning centre who has resisted the overtures from the Canberra Capitals to make a WNBL comeback this season. But while Tracey Beatty turned down an offer from Capitals coach Carrie Graf to add to her 347 WNBL games, the former grand final most valuable player is coming out of retirement to help basketball in Canberra. The Capitals are crying out for a player of Beatty’s calibre to join them this season to add depth, height and experience to their young roster. They had just eight fit players against Dandenong on Saturday. Graf sent Beatty a text earlier this year asking if she would consider playing again, two years after her last game. Beatty thought it was a joke. But Graf was keen to add her to the roster. Beatty declined and will instead end more than a year out of basketball when she plays in the Basketball ACT Summer Slam competition. “My partner is one of the organisers of it so he was bugging me and I said I’d play,” Beatty said. “I’m nervous, I haven’t touched a basketball since August last year. Professionally it was time for me to hang them up. I’m past WNBL, I don’t want to play for sheep stations anymore.” The Summer Slam will be littered with former Capitals and Canberra Cannons. It’s a six-week tournament with four men’s and four women’s teams, which were picked through a draft. The first game will be on November 6. WNBL great and former Bulleen Boomer Sharin Milner will be playing, former Cannon Brad Williams will suit up and Capitals great Linda Muir is a coach. Beatty’s happy to play socially. She says it’s time for her to stand on the sideline and for son Bowyn to start shining as a star. Bowyn is nine years old and has just started playing in the under-12s competition. “He’s already one of the biggest kids out there, he’s going really well,” Beatty said. Beatty made a WNBL comeback in the 2010-11 season to help the Capitals. But almost 20 years after starting her basketball career at the AIS, Beatty says she won’t be enticed into playing again.
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Mates scramble way to Sunshine Coast
A mixed group of mates from Murrumbidgee Golf Club have qualified for Australia’s largest and most successful pro-amateur team event, the Holden Scramble. Public servants Aaron Shearing and Shane Kingston, car dealer Lyndon Costello, advertiser Ron Shepherd and Dieter Tietz will team up with Murrumbidgee professional Matt Docking for the event at the Sunshine Coast from November 15-18. Docking has helped fine-tune some of his teammates’ games and now they’re reaping the rewards. They will play against 28 teams. No ACT team has won the event in its 22-year history. “It’s probably for most of these guys a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Docking said. The scramble is an ambrose elimination event.
Amateur Day at Federal
They’re golfing stars now, but it’s a little known fact two of Australia’s top-three ranked players kick-started their careers at the Federal Golf Club. More than a decade after world No. 17 Jason Day and Marc Leishman played at the Federal Amateur Open, a new crop of rising stars will be hoping to follow in their footsteps when the tournament begins on Friday. Some of the best 120 amateur players from around Australia, Japan and New Zealand will compete at the world amateur ranking event from Friday to Sunday. Canberra hopeful Adam Robinson will be using some home-course knowledge to try to win the title. Robinson won the Federal Club Championship two weeks ago, shooting eight-under par through four rounds. In another major coup for the club, former Australian cricketer Greg Blewett will be at the event and play in the sponsors day on Thursday.
Larkham’s on the water
ACT Brumbies new leader Stephen Larkham is set to become the first head coach in Super Rugby history to double as a waterboy when the 2014 season begins. And while International Rugby Board protocols ban head coaches from being on the sideline, Larkham is keen to keep his spot close to the action while director of rugby Laurie Fisher gets a birds-eye view from the stands. SANZAR confirmed to Locker Room that because Laurie Fisher is the director of rugby and deemed the head of the Brumbies rugby program, Larkham can continue barking orders from the bench. “That’s the plan, to stay out there all the time, I’ve really enjoyed that role over the past two years,” Larkham said. “I get the emotion of the players and the feel of the crowd. With me in one spot and Laurie in another we get two different views of the game and run off one another.” Having a World Cup-winner, two-time Super Rugby champion and one of the greatest playmakers in Australian rugby history so close to the action can only be good news for the Brumbies.
A good sign for Raiders
Is the Canberra Raiders’ billboard curse finally over? Straight-shooting new coach Ricky Stuart doesn’t come across as the superstitious type. But it was notable the new billboard outside Raiders HQ unveiled by the club this week no longer features any players. After he was sacked last year, Josh Dugan’s image was removed from the sign, which also featured senior players Brett White, Terry Campese, Tom Learoyd-Lahrs and David Shillington. Campese and White both suffered season-ending knee injuries after being featured on the billboard last year, while Learoyd-Lahrs missed a big chunk of this season with a foot problem. Dugan’s replacement on the sign, Jarrod Croker battled knee and hamstring injuries at times this year. Now the billboard features the club’s new slogan, ‘We Are Raiders’, with not a player to be seen. Intentional or not, it’s one less thing for Stuart to worry about.
Walters' food for thought
Long-time Raiders chairman and foundation chief executive John McIntyre had his last board meeting as chairman on Friday. It ends 32 years with the club his dad, Les, built. In looking back over his career, McIntyre remembered the post-grand final function at The Lodge with Prime Minister Bob Hawke in 1989. “There was a massive spread of food and a young Kevin Walters looked at Hazel Hawke and said, ‘Gee Mrs Hawke, you must have been up all night making these sandwiches’.” McIntyre was late to the function because he had spent the day fixing the trophy that Laurie Daley dropped and broke.
