BASKETBALL: Aussie player still a Kiwi at heart

If a vocal section of the Pettigrew-Green Arena goes wild each time the Australian point guard scores in this afternoon's test match, please don't get offended.
It's not that they want the Tall Ferns to lose today's second test against the Opals, they'll just be proving the old agade the blood is thicker than water.
You see the main focus of their attention will be Alicia Poto, the 27-year old born and raised in Sydney, but with a father from right here in Bridge Pa.
Poto is expecting a useful turnout from the whanau this afternoon who, like her, always barrack for New Zealand, unless it's in a game against the Opals.
"I pretty much go for the All Blacks," Poto said.
"I'm actually Kiwi in most things, except for this, and within the team I'm pretty vocal about it and let them know who I go for. And it's good, because we're winning at the moment.
"We beat the Wallabies the other week and hopefully we can do it again in a week's time. But yeah, my teammates give me a bit of shit, but not too bad."
Poto is no stranger to Hawke's Bay, having visited several times over the years, and once her playing career is over she hopes to come back more often to learn more about her Maori heritage.
With those ties being so strong, Poto actually toyed with the idea of hitching her playing wagon to New Zealand, instead of Australia, a few years ago.
"I actually had an approach back in '93 when Basketball New Zealand rang mum and dad to see where my loyalties lay," she said.
"At that time it was kind of hard because I was going to school and for me to get the residency stuff organised I actually had to move over here and dad was pretty much 'nah, we're not moving back to New Zealand'. So once that decision was made I was always committed to Australia."
And she's never looked back, captaining their age-group teams, the Jems, the second place at the World Junior Championhips and being a member of last year's silver medal-winning team at the Athens Olympics.
In between, there have been six years spent playing in Europe, firstly in Hungary, followed by France and the Czech Republic. While in France, her team won the FIBA European League, basketball's equivalent of soccer's European Champions League.
But with her mother's health not what it was, Poto has opted out of the final year of her contract in the Czech Republic, to return home and play for the Sydney Flames in the national league.
But the big goal remains toppling the all-conquering Americans at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
"I think we can beat them, it's so close now, and the thing is everyone is catching up. I mean who would have thought New Zealand would be top-eight in the world?"
Poto puts a lot of that down to the introduction of Australian coaches into the Basketball New Zealand High Performance programme.
"People ask me, especially in Europe, how we can be number two in the world and only have a semi-professional league where girls still have to work and are only training four times a week?
It pretty much comes down to the basic fundamentals that we get taught.