Basketball New Zealand

Tall Fern Toni Edmondson (ImageSport NZ)

Geoff Longley, The Press
Tall Fern Toni Edmondson faces an uncertain basketball future in New Zealand after the collapse of the Christchurch Sirens franchise in the Australian Women’s National Basketball League.

Edmondson said yesterday she was unclear what her next move in the sport was after the Sirens were cut from the 10-team Australian league last week, having failed to raise funding to cover the forthcoming season.

Edmondson’s plight will be typical of the Tall Ferns players at the Olympic Games in Beijing with seven Sirens on that roster who had relocated to Christchurch last year on the promise of a three-year licence.

Edmondson, 21, returned home to attend Canterbury University after having spent two years at Otago University doing a physical education degree.

With the Australian league starting in early October but Edmondson committed with university examinations until after that she is unlikely to attract much interest from Australian teams with their rosters virtually finalised.

Edmondson said she felt a little bitter about her plight.

“It was a good opportunity while it lasted. We have never had anything like this before with most of the New Zealand girls playing together. Now it’s gone and may not come back I’m really disappointed.”

The athletic Edmondson quickly showed the benefits of playing against quality Australian opponents week in and out, lifting her game to a new level which had her in the Tall Ferns team for two international tournaments before Beijing.

Her career had earlier suffered a setback when being the last player cut from the team to travel effectively squeezed out by the arrival of New Zealand-born but US-raised guard Clare Bodensteiner who played little part in the Olympic campaign and who now intends pursuing a coaching career.

`It’s been pretty hard watching the girls over there on TV. It was not the nicest thing to happen, I guess, but you get over it.”

Edmondson said she had been down for a while after her Olympic omission and was just recovering when dealt another setback by the Sirens’ scratching.

“We knew they always had issues with funding but you always hoped for the best.”

Edmondson said she would welcome the chance to continue to play in the Australian league with teams knowing how she had performed.

“But it is getting late and I’m not really free until November.”

With no national women’s league in recent seasons, Edmondson’s basketball diet is now at interclub level for Aranui where she is dominant as her team heads toward the play-offs.

The only silver lining to the storm clouds for Edmondson is that she has received an invitation to rekindle her other sporting love, volleyball. She will tour Vietnam with the New Zealand women’s volleyball team next month.

She follows in the footsteps of her mother, Mary, who was a long-serving national representative.

“I love both games and with no basketball commitments I was able to go.”