Save the Cairns Taipans

June 5th, 2009:
Cairns Taipans Inc

Thanks everyone for your patience.

We wanted to touch base with you all to give you a brief over view on whats been happening over the last few weeks, and where to from here.

Our Head Coach, Aaron Fearne landed back to Australia in Brisbane on the 1st of May and hit the ground running with coaching the Marlins. Prior to his arrival, Aaron provided in detail his intentions and plans for recruiting a team that fits with position of the new Cairns Taipans in the National Basketball League. Both Aaron and Mark Beecroft along with board member Craig Hartman have developed potential playing lists for the Taipans that will replicate the fighting spirit of the new community owned Taipans.

We have been working with Basketball Australia, the Cairns Convention
Centre and the other teams to secure a schedule that anticipates a late September start.Basketball Australia will release the schedule when all venues dates have been locked in,but what we do know with certainty is that the season will comprise 14 home games (and hopefully some play off games)

We anticipate the Official License agreement to be received by the Taipans in the next few days from Basketball Australia. This will intiate a number of things for the club:

• We will be able to complete the contract with KPMG so we can then work on the office set up,coaches office set up and continue with the recruiting process.
• We will be able to commence staffing the admin office that will in turn allow us to complete and release season ticket and corporate box packages.
  
  

The player recruitment process requires us to first establish an agreeable set of circumstances with the player and/or his agent. From there that agreement is submitted to the NBL office for examination and approval, and if approved a contract is exchanged. When the ink is dry on the contract we can then announce that the player will be suiting up for the Taipans.

There are a number of rumours floating around about who we have signed,but you read it here first that no agreements have yet been lodged or approved with the NBL office. We expect to lodge some agreements in the next day or two, and will keep you informed of where we are heading with respect to building the team.

We will be in contact shortly with more information as we have it.

Again, we would like to thank all Foundation and Syndicate Members for
your support through this process along with Cairns Regional Council.
We are very excited about the up-coming season and seeing the Skytrans
Cairns Taipans in full flight at the Cairns Convention Centre in
September.

If you have not yet converted your pledge to cash, please go to our Pledge page to do so. We have 4 unidentified pledge payments of $5000.00 each.Could you please check our web site to see if your pledge is showing as paid and if not contact Steve on steve@travelism.com.au or 0431105646 with details of when you paid/bank acct details etc so we can identify and acknowledge your pledge conversion.

Cheers,

DD and crew.

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