National Basketball League Side Wollongong Hawks Owner Confident Club Can Improve

A little more than a month since "assuming ownership" of National Basketball League team Wollongong Hawks, James Spenceley has "overseen new administration that has quickly signed new players and ­sponsors and instituted a new ­membership and marketing program," according to John Stensholt of the SYDNEY MORNING HERALD. Having already spent "north of a ­million dollars" extracting the Hawks from its problems, Vocus Communications CEO Spenceley said that he did not "quite realise how close the Hawks were to going out of business." Spenceley: "It was probably days away from going into administration and having to call in the liquidator." Though the NBL has "had its success stories," it has "also been hit by a series of clubs going out of business in the past decade." Spenceley, though, said that "there is plenty of hope for the league." He said, "The NBL probably couldn't have got any worse. But there is such a potential around the sport and that is what has interested me" (SMH, 8/25).