Hi all,

Our news for the week is that it is confirmed that we will be taking two teams to Taiwan in September.

Playing ages

At this stage we are only after Expressions of Interest in who would like to participate. There will be only boys’ teams this time and the age groups will be 13 years and younger (if you play in our U14/U12 competition) and 15 years and younger if you play in U16/U14 competition).

Costings

We will be away for 9 days and at this stage with what China Airlines has given us in Sponsorship it will be $3,000 per child.

What we will do

Quick guide on what it will include:

# all air fares

# 4 star hotel accommodation

# all bus transport to games and sightseeing

# New Balance Touring outfits, playing bags etc

# Hotel meals all included

# High speed rail travel (300+ klms per hour)

Dates

China Airlines will be one of our sponsors and we are working at the dates between the 14th and 19th September and return nine days later. The airlines are checking the best departure date but will know within the next 10 days. It will be at the start of the September school holidays so we are travelling in peak holiday time ☹

Sponsors

Because of the hard work Kim Marx does with us and all of the community, Brisbane City Council are also sponsoring the trip as the city we are playing and staying in is Kaohsiung City which is the sister city of Brisbane. We are also working with the Taiwanese business community and the State Member James Martin for Sponsorship. I cannot start to tell everyone how much a difference people like Kim and James have made to us and we cannot thank them enough.

Life experience

The trip will be more than just playing some teams in Taiwan. It will be about a life experience and hopefully an adventure that these children will never forget. We will be travelling high-speed trains going to night markets and in a country where the native language is not familiar to most of us. There will also be a welcome dinner planned with the City Government. We will have a minimum of five games of basketball against Basketball excellent schools that the Education Bureau of Kaohsiung City Government has helped us organise. These we believe are reasonably high level teams.

We will have a local guide with us at all times and will have 20 players and 8 adults.

Expression of interest

At this stage we are only looking for Expressions of Interest from players (mainly Gold and Purple players but some red may be suitable) and over the next month we will organise training for these teams and have a more detailed itinerary and exact costings. When you reply could you put name, Coach and division you play please.

As everyone is aware Rockets do not make money from these types of activities unlike when other tours are organised. But what we do is work hard looking for sponsors so that the costs are as low as possible for the people that are going.

Talk soon

Mark