FAB Flournoy has dismissed talk of his bruised Newcastle Eagles being under siege, insisting he has faced far tougher times in his decade in charge.
Flournoy’s men have dropped into second place in the BBL after back-to-back home defeats and are without two of their key players for this weekend’s trip to a dangerous Surrey Heat. Having lost the BBL Cup and surrendered the Trophy at the quarter-final stage, this has the hallmarks of a difficult campaign for the Eagles.
Indeed with Leicester Riders looking ominously strong, some critics are already writing off the Eagles in the BBL title race and speculating that they are too brittle to secure silverware this season.
Flournoy admits his team are up against it but laughs off the merest mention of a crisis at Sport Central. “Not even close,” Flournoy (pictured above) said. “It’s not even the biggest challenge I have faced in my time here. It’s a challenge, don’t get me wrong. It’s a huge test as well but it’s not pressure compared to what has gone on in the past here.
“In all honesty, what is happening to us this year is to be expected. It has happened before in other years so we’re used to it. This is definitely not a crisis.” A candid Flournoy is fully prepared for the examination that will come his way if Eagles drop another game. Indeed in some ways, he would be disappointed if people didn’t consider their mini-slump a “crisis” of sorts.
“In fairness, the question has to be asked,” he said. “Fans will ask it and supporters have the right to ask it. If you have only been watching us from a certain year then you probably take our success for granted because we have had a huge and fantastic run of success.
“When that run is interrupted you’re going to get questions asked of you. People are going to wonder ‘Is this the run over?’ That is a fair assessment of anyone looking in from the outside and to be fair, we ask those questions ourselves.
“No one is shying away from those questions in our locker-room.
“We have got ourselves back to the drawing board and we are attempting to get back to basics too. And the first person I always look at before we look at any individuals is myself. Is there more I can do?
“Can I explain myself better? I have to improve my own performance just as soon as the guys do.”
Trawling through the record books, Flournoy doesn’t have to look far to discover a precedent to this year’s problems.
“If you look back at our record and look back at history – and I always use history as a guide – then you can see we have been here before,” he said.
“In 2006 we did the clean sweep. Look at what happened the following year to the team in 2007. We struggled. That team only won the play-offs and we had a very big pack of new players.
“The team split up a bit from 2006: in particular we lost Charles Smith who went to Europe that year and we had a completely new group of players, and we developed a new system and a new way of playing. So I see similarities this year with that. This is not new at all.”
