Tara Murray
A familiar face is taking on the head coaching role for Melton Thoroughbreds men’s Country Basketball League side.
The Thoroughbreds announced that John Allison would coach the side, with Mick McCallum having coached the team the past two seasons.
Allison is no stranger to the Thoroughbreds.
He coached the club to a women’s Big V division 3 championship in 2008 before coaching the men’s side in 2017 and then becoming the club’s director of coaching.
Allison said everything just fell into place for him to take on the CBL role.
“Just through some general inquiries and conversations with people who supported what I had in mind,” he said.
“I live in Melton and I’m always done there seeing my kids playing and watching the Big V. I thought it might be time to get back into coaching in this area.”
Allison said he knows a lot of the kids coming through the program in Melton along with several other people in the program having been around Melton for a long time.
Allison will be assisted by his two sons, Liam and Blake Allison.
Both were part of the Thoroughbreds CBL championship side in 2023, while are part of the club’s Big V program.
While John has coached the pair in juniors before, they’ve never coached together before.
“It will be interesting,” John said of coaching with his sons. “They’re very opinionated on the basketball court.
“It’ll be something a bit different. They will bring different ideas. They’ve played at higher levels and they will bring some modern ideas to the game.”
John said his two sons would just be coaching, not stepping onto the court.
He said when he discussed it with them they wanted to give the young guys a chance to show what they can do.
“A lot of them learn by making mistakes,” he said. “You want to develop and evolve them as basketball players.
“There’s some players I would love to see playing.”
Allison said he was unsure who from last season’s squad would return to play this year.
He said they were hoping to see a number of their under-18s and under-20s players turn up for try outs.
“Hopefully they get there,” he said. “It would be nice to have a few olde futures as well to help out, but we’ll see what happens.
“Hopefully they then stay and playing youth league or Big V men’s side.”
