The lessons learnt in cold school gyms in Arbroath never leave you, Gareth Murray proclaims. Wintry weeknights and sunny Saturday mornings, one for all and all for one as part of the town’s Musketeers, a basketball club turned talent pipeline.
The education took him far and wide. To America and college days in Michigan, to France and a lengthy spell soaking up the ambience and athletic opportunity. Big stages with Great Britain as a member of the starting line-up at two European championship finals. But principally, to Glasgow, where at the age of 36, the pupil has become after taking over as player-coach of the Rocks, Scotland’s sole entrant in the British Basketball League.
His competitive tenure begins tomorrow against Cheshire Phoenix in the group stages of the BBL Cup, with Murray now guiding many who were team-mates when the previous season was abruptly aborted in March. A rookie on the sidelines, leaning back on his initial education and the men who taught him well.
“When I was growing up in high school, my coaches were the two PE teachers,” Murray recounts. “John Grant ran Arbroath Musketeers in his spare time. Keith Ritchie took a lot of the team. And we also had John Anton who taught PE in Carnoustie and who was a head coach of the Scotland team Under-16s as well.
“Those guys are still big influences on me as a player because they weren’t about team success. Obviously you want to win and that’s that was what the goal was. But it was all about individual practice and individual fundamentals and producing players.
“We didn’t have as many international players as Falkirk Fury, who brought through Kieron Achara, Ali Fraser, Fraser Malcolm and Jonny Bunyan. But you had myself at the Musketeers. And you now have Hannah Robb who came through the women’s side, who’s going to make her senior debut for GB against Poland on Saturday. She’s just 22. And she’s got a great future and it’s a credit to the work so many people put in.”
Murray was a veritable late bloomer, returning from the USA as a relative unknown, forced to prove himself with the Rocks via an open trial to simply earn a shot at a professional.
For Basketball #TeamScotSportFocus meet @GjM_33_11 Captain of @rocksglasgow and the only man to play for Team Scotland at both Melbourne 2006 and Gold Coast 2018! 🏀🏴
See his full profile here: https://t.co/R88LzmE000 pic.twitter.com/Yq4LwnHmj8
— Team Scotland (@Team_Scotland) February 6, 2020
The trajectory was slow but upward. Even so it took him until past his 30th birthday to earn his first GB cap before his diligent service made him an ever-present under successive coaches, not a star but a vital cog.
“You work on those things that will help you,” he says. “So for instance, like in the BBL, I have a different role from the one I play for GB. With GB, I am literally a role player: you play defence, you hit open shots, and you try and work on that as best as you can.
“But when I’m in playing in the BBL, you’ve got to do a little bit of everything. You got to be really vocal, to be a leader, you’ve got to be able to score the ball in different ways, you got to defend multiple different players.
“You’re trying to work on your weaknesses, improve your overall game. And hopefully something will stick and you’ll become really good at something.”
He’ll spell the mantra out to the Rocks, the youngest squad in the BBL of whom little is expected as the financial pressures of playing behind closed doors translate into budget prudence. “We all have to adjust,” he concedes. “It’s going to be a tough season, for so many reasons. But it’s going to be unpredictable so we’ll see how we go.”
