It's a deal (from left) Taylor Hawks players Ethan Rusbatch, Quintin Bailey, Derone Raukawa, and Jordan Hunt, coach Mick Downer and the Taylor Corp team of Kelvin and Cameron Taylor. Photo / Supplied.
It's a deal (from left) Taylor Hawks players Ethan Rusbatch, Quintin Bailey, Derone Raukawa, and Jordan Hunt, coach Mick Downer and the Taylor Corp team of Kelvin and Cameron Taylor. Photo / Supplied.
Fruit exporter Kelvin Taylor was once a "rugby man" who'd never been to a basketball game and barely knew Hawke's Bay had a team in the national league.
That was until a cold call in desperation from Bay Hawks chairman Keith Price led to signing the contract for naming rightsin September 2016, with the Hawks having not won a game since the previous year, and the dream of only a second NBL title seemingly light years away.
The deal has recently been signed for a sixth season amid huge anticipation of the team going all the way to win the national basketball league for only the second time.
It was initially a hard row to hoe, but with Taylor snapping up the opportunity to back a community enterprise with little apparent commercial benefit to the business of Hastings-based Taylor Corporation, the name has now become synonymous with a revival.
The Hawks, continuing chairman Price and new coach and general manager Mick Downer hope to finally crack the Sal's NBL title in 2022 – 17 years after the first triumph in 2005.
A 24-match losing streak was broken with a Hawks win in April 2017, there was enough in the rest of the season to put the word 'promising' on the report card, and the Hawks reached the quarterfinals at the end of the season.
Big crowds are poised to descend on Pettigrew.Green Arena for the Hawks 2022 season. Photo NZME
A year later they were in the 2019 final, losing to eternal NBL glamour franchise the Wellington Saints, by 10 points. The Hawks, along with the Saints and the Southland Sharks, opted out of a bubbled and draft-teamed Covid-19 NBL "Showdown", and last year were back in the final again, losing to the Saints again but by just two points.
Even before this season starts, expected to be with a home Pettigrew Green Arena match against the Saints in early April, the stocks continue to rise with Ethan Rusbatch, Jordan Hunt, Hyrum Harris, Jonathon Janssen and recent sign-on Quintin Bailey named in a 21-match Tall Blacks squad preparing for the upcoming World Cup Asian group qualifiers.
Two of them, Rusbatch and Harris, will be on the plane on Monday for the Philippines where the first stage will be played over the following 11 days – the 27th-ranked Tall Blacks play India (80th) next Thursday, Korea (30th) the next day, the Philippines (33rd) on February 27, and India again on February 28.
Taylor has barely missed a Hawks game since he and the family company became involved, and says by comparison he finds more entertainment by the quarter on the boards than he finds in watching a whole game of rugby. Half the rugby game is scrums, he says, and his once favourite game has become "boring."
Price, a former multiple-titled Hawke's Bay premier club rugby coach, says when he first made the call he had never met Taylor.
"It was the introduction from a former Hawks GM to Kelvin that lead to a simple but unbelievably positive response," he says. "I said (to Kelvin) we're in trouble right now but I have a plan, and this thing could be great, are you in?"
The deal fell into place and the two have been teaching each other ever since, he says.
"We were both very inexperienced in basketball," he says, and somehow typifies the knowledge-sharing with a quote from Taylor himself.
"He's a straight shooter, he says it how it is, and has this saying: You've only got to put the ball through the hoop – how hard is that?"
More formally, Taylor, who enjoys being at the games with family, friends, staff and business and industry partners, says: "Taylor Corp has enjoyed supporting the Taylor Hawks and watching the sport grow. We joined in the tough times and are proud of how our support has helped the club continue to grow.
