Taipans running on empty after brutal road stretch

Adam Forde always knew the travel could catch up with the Cairns Taipans. On Saturday night it did, made worse by illness to two of his stars.

That’s why there’s no panic after a heavy loss.

The Taipans started well against the South East Melbourne Phoenix at John Cain Arena and led by as much as 12 in the second quarter. But before half-time, Forde saw warning signs that the Taipans were running on empty.

The 32-point defeat leaves Cairns 4-4 on the season. It’s disappointing, but far from a reason to panic.

“We ran out of gas and I said to them afterwards that I didn’t want them to beat themselves up too much on this,” Forde said.

“Upon reflection, I’ve given the guys four days off and we always do a travel-recovery-film day if we’re flying, we do game day with a shootaround so I double dip there, and then we train.

“We knew this was the toughest stretch and there was a level of robustness that I wanted to build amongst the group, but it was with about 3:30 to go in the second and there was a loose ball where we looked tired, and didn’t recover it.

“Then we came down and my 35-year-old back up point guard (Shaun Bruce) has outrun everybody, and we’re jogging.

“I rotated the bench through at that point with the starters back on and we got into an early on-ball with Jonah Bolden and he gets a nice little finish on the rim and it’s a one-point game.

“Then we’re jogging again and a couple of minutes passed and Brucey’s looked gassed.”

The Taipans racked up plenty of miles before the season even began, playing road pre-season games in Karratha, Melbourne, Bendigo and the Sunshine Coast.

They did it knowing six road games awaited in the opening five rounds of NBL27. Forde believed the load would build resilience and connection, even if it cost them on the win-loss ledger.

So he’ll happily take where his side sits after Round 5. The schedule now eases, with a full week to prepare before Cairns hosts the New Zealand Breakers next Sunday.

“I can sit here and say it’s frustrating with the 28 offensive rebounds which has been our Achilles heel all season, but also we have played more away games than anybody else and if I’m being realistic, internally as coaches we didn’t want Jaylin Galloway to come in and have to be our saviour,” Forde said.

“We wanted to be 4-4 if we could and anything above that would have been fantastic and I don’t want to be too dismissive of the loss, but the boys are tired. They looked tired, we played tired and we ran out of gas.

“When you’re trying to manufacture energy, sometimes it can be a bit of a falsehood if you try to rev them up, but credit to South East.

“They kept themselves in the game with the hustle and effort plays, and we had no answer for that, and then they just took the wind completely out of our sails.”