No slacking off in late stages for SE Systems or the Marauders

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

What do you do when you're out of the running? Take the hint and have a Tuesday night off?

There's no chance of either SE Systems under Adrian Sparks or the Adam Harford-led Massive Marauders doing that, for as long as they can still move.

Game 1 of men's club basketball at the YMCA on Tuesday night was won by SE Systems, 76-52. They had won the August 9 Round 3 clash 62-48.

Sparks, SES club captain and former Gisborne Basketball Association president, was well pleased but would say no more than that “for our guys, it was good to have a run”.

Systems had control 19-8, 36-27 and 58-38 with contributions in double-figures from Keenan Ruru-Poharama (18), Dom Wilson (17) and Matt Kemp (14), while Doug Jones (17) and Harford (12) did that for the Marauders.

Ruru-Poharama opened the scoring with the first of his four three-pointers. He has always shot the ball well and been a good facilitator; his second trey gave Systems an 8-2 lead. Marauders one-guard Luke Bradley (9pts) played with urgency early on, with a touch bank-shot left-side and he got up to block Carl Riini's shot out of court to beat the buzzer for quartertime.

SE Systems continued to pepper the Marauders in the second period (Wilson hit a trey left-side for 22-8, and Ruru-Poharama from the same side of the floor for 25-12) but some of the interplay between the Marauders on offence and shots they made at the rim were remarkable: Harford with a five-footer from the right side to close it to 22-10, and later left-side for 34-25.

The unassuming Simon Wilson (8pts) four times worked hard to get himself open and surprised opponents and onlookers alike with his ability to finish against bigger defensive players.

Harford said: “We did well considering our numbers — we had no substitutes — and the Raiders are a great bunch of guys to run against.

“It was very physical, but that's all good.”