Sandringham Sabres
The First 25 Years
1974-1999
Compiled & Edited by Chris Bennett
E-book – 400 pages
Fast break your way through 25 years of history of the Sandringham Sabres (now known as Southern Basketball Association).
In this e-book, snippetts, stories, photos, raw prawns, stats, results, awards, articles, reveal a community of dedicated basketball enthusiasts who shared their dreams, achievements, frustrations and disappointments to help create a large basketball association where 1000’s of children and adults now play in a eight-court stadium.
You may not be part of this history or you may not be interested in basketball or sport in general but I believe you will find the recollections section at the start of each decade in this e-book fascinating. They are stories of friendship, fun, sadness and excitement.
Download E-book Here
Sandringham Sabres: The First 25 Years
Low resolution copy (12MB) – http://chrischats.com/sabres/Sabres_25Yrs_LR.pdf
High resolution copy (28MB) – http://chrischats.com/sabres/Sabres_25Yrs_HR.pdf
When you download this e-book don’t forget to save it to your hard drive. To navigate around the e-book click onto ‘pages’ or ‘bookmarks’ located in the top left corner of this pdf file.
1970’s
“First impression of the Memorial Hall? It was scary, sensational when you have to put your feet on the wall to pass the ball. It was old. Peeling paint off the walls, lines everywhere. It was so small we had to play four a side. It was great. I got to touch the ball. It was small, quick, fast and from that hall you made friends for life.”
Ross Graham
“In the seventies what stood out was the genuine willingness of the players to play the game without knowing what they were doing. It was a fledging sport. The atmosphere was good fun, everybody friendly, having a bit of fun.”
Bill Evans
1980’s
“They were the best years of my life. My basketball friends are still my closest and dearest friends. We are inseparable.”
Tracy Aitken
“There were so few doing so much. They were a good group. They had the same goals and desires to make it better. We were always inhibited by the lack of courts and base level. Saturdays I still refereed most of the day. Always undermanned but we sort of got through.”
Terry Walsh
1990’s
“One of the significant events was the four court stadium, but in getting that we lost that family spirit; that family feeling of a family club. However the benefit of four courts over the years gave an opportunity to thousands of kids to play basketball.”
Chris Hall
“In 1999, one hundred people turned up to our Save Our Stadium rally. If there was no concentrated effort to save the stadium we may have had units where the stadium stands now.”
Michael Stepien
Thanks to the executive committee of the Southern Basketball Association for allowing the ‘Sandringham Sabres’ e-book to become freely available to anyone interested in reading it.
Celebrating 50 years – (1974-2024) article by Chris Bennett (co-founder) of the Southern Basketball Association.
