“WE’RE on a journey towards our peak” is Newcastle Eagles’ boss Fab Flournoy’s half-time verdict on his troops ahead of tonight’s home clash with Leicester Riders.
The Eagles currently lie handily placed in the BBL table in third and while they are eight points behind leaders Mersey Tigers, the do have the comfort of the opportunity of slashing that deficit to two if they win their three games in hand.
Also worth bearing in mind is that Flournoy is a dab hand in timing a title challenge to perfection.
A slow start has one or two fans of opposing teams thinking that the Eagles are about to finally slip up but many other realise that as the season goes on, they gradually work up a head of steam until come the end if they haven’t won a major piece of silverware, they will at the very least have been in hot contention.
The same pattern appears to be evolving.
A couple of bad defeats early on, followed by a close win or two and up to their last fixture where they exploded into life in a thumping 98-70 hammering of a shell-shocked Guildford Heat.
All of which backs up the old saying of ‘It’s not how you start a race but how you finish it’ and Flournoy is no different when it comes to heeding that particular mantra.
He said: “Everyone knows how I coach. I tell the guys that we want to be playing well at the end of the season.
“With each campaign, we start off trying to mould this team together. We have our highs and lows and work towards increasing those highs throughout the season until we come to the final straight where we aim to have everybody in the squad firing on all cylinders.
“Having worked off the Christmas and New Year rust, we are playing very well now as was shown against Guildford. However, we do not want to peak too early but saying that, we are constantly seeking to improve in all areas of our game so that we are in the mix and ready come the final stages of the season.”
Tonight’s opponents Leicester have had some chopping and changing to do having seen Phil Missere leave the club with seven foot centre Liam Potter coming in.
Newcastle though will continue with their familiar faces due to Flournoy’s insistence on making do with what you have.
He added: “Regarding recruitment, as with cards, I like to play with the hand that I’ve been dealt with.
“We are careful when we recruit in the summer. We do our due diligence and try and figure out who will best complement the players we are retaining.
“It’s over four years since we cut a player and obviously the last three years we have won the league, so the success of that policy is obvious.
“We were always realistic that we had a brutal schedule at the start of the season and once we reached the end of October we took stock and formed the view that if everyone was healthy and played the way we wanted them to then we had a chance to win every game.
“Leicester have had to make a change and giving our height average, a seven foot guy is going to cause some problems and we have to combat that.
“I’m not quite sure how Potter will fit in with their line-up whether it will be offensively or defensively which could be to our advantage as both player and club try to gel with each other as this will be his first game.”
