Morning breakfast with the Gilas team , the players were pleasantly surprise that
their contact friend from NZ is with the team.
It’s been close to a year since most of us last saw each other in MOA
for FIBA Asia. Sat with coaching staff
Tab. Chot Josh and Naxcio had great conversations about NZ , Adams, and Egypt I told coach Tab that the
Egyptan coach was interested in what he had to say about beating Iran, of which coach Chot said he should talk to me
“ I’m the Iran killer”
Joined Gilas for the their morning practice, it was a delight
to see the final product of what this team had been working on , the DDO with
Blatche incorporated in it. Chot’s says
in 5 days it’s opening night. This is it.
It was during this session that Junamar got a significant dress down for not being able to
run the DDO offense they’ve been practicing for months, quite literally Junmar
was thrown out of the practice drill schemes ,
Beau took his role, his teammates
however knowing he was down and was really critical to their success picked him up and patiently went through the
drills with him one more time.
Had conversations with Coach Ryan and Norman , the
connection with Norman was with my former church in Manila GCF we talked about
good friend Pastor Butch, Ryan on the
other hand was really interested in NZ and visiting , the other connection we
had was we were both kids of UN Bangkok post families.
When we got back to the hotel , the buzz was the PBA draft
was ongoing, it was a thrill to see how
each individual reacted and shared views on who their respective team was
drafting (not the team was made up of players from the respective PBA teams)
By early afternoon ( 1 pm) we the organizers got a call that
people were entering the venue already,
I rushed to the venue , where my contact for ticket distribution was
waiting for me, by the time I got there
about a 100 to 200 fans had secured seats already. This was a problem as we had sold preferred
priority passes that would occupy the seats,
we tried requesting that they vacate them, but to no avail, the munciipiyt and local sport mayor were
starting to have concerns with the complaints and confusion coming in of people
either wanting to keep their seats or those who paid priority passes but would
avail of the beneifit, a call was made
to use the other side of the court for priority passes. The marshalling of the event by the local
Filipino group was significantly
disorganised and this was visible to the local authorities. At the end most
people got their seats . the next problem was the ones who bought priority
passes were sold these passes with the false expectation that they would get
guaranteed access to meet the players, this was compounded when we found out
that the meet and greet photo opportunity scheme by major sponsor SMaRT included fans first
buying a phone card. At the end to
mitigate the situation the local Filipino community leaders decided to buy the
phone cards for their customers who were sold priority passes. It took 2 full hours for every one who held a
priority pass to get a phote opporutity with the players. It was with great thanks that local player
stars, Alapag, Pingris, Chan, Ranidel
and Junmar patiently met and took pictures with their fans for over 2
hour. This by far was the biggest meet
and greet activity that Gilas conducted while in Spain. At the end we had very happy customers. Our pass holders watched a quality game with
front court seats, met their idols and
got pictures with them, got a 5 euro phone card all for the price of 5
euros. How could you beat that
deal. Over 500 people availed of this
deal. The crowd size in my estimate was
around 2,500. At the end we had 14 bus
loads of people from Madrid ( the news had it at 7 busses ) but the authorities
has 14 counted. I got the registration
of 7 busses, the other 7 came from
another group. The game on the 24th
Sunday vs Egypt had the largest Filipino crowd ( around 2,500) even larger than the any Filiipino crowd in
any of the games in Seville for the WC
On the game itself , which is what I came for I sat at right
at front court desk across the team benches.
The environment with the crowd was surreal, deafeining , the animated
crowd size in a compact arena was crazy and seriously loud, every play was highly anticipated and cheered
for. This was the best basketball crowd
you could have , the game was teleivesed back in the Philippines.
You couldn’t find a better televised game and this was a tune-up game, while just a tune-up game the level of
intensity was far from it. The boys
really wanted to finally win a game in Spain vs a legitimate national team (
one that was participating in the world cup),
at half time walking with the team manager , Aboy castro who was elated with the turnout also because
it meant it would cover some of his expenses. He said “ we can beat this team”
and I acknowledged yes we can. Gilas eventually won the game getting it’s
first official Win in Spain vs a world cup participating team.
Senegal played Estonia for the 2nd game, in a surprise result Estonia beat Senegal by
20 pts pulling away in the last 5 minutes.
Came back to hotel for a much needed dinner.
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