THE wheel has come full circle for the Bears.

In 1984 the basketball team left Brighton for Worthing because fans were losing interest.

Now, 15 years later and with the team in disarray at the foot of the Budweiser National League, audiences are down again.

Even the 1,400-capacity Worthing Leisure Centre is proving impossible to fill following a league-record run of 30 straight defeats.

Co-directors Christian Hamilton and Eileen and Romek Kriwald hope the planned move to the 6,000-seater Brighton Centre will bring back the good times.

And the English Basketball Association's competitions manager Mark Hennen thinks it will too.

He said: "The Budweiser League is very much arena-led. Teams in Manchester, London and Birmingham play in large arenas rather than sports halls.

"I think the Bears would be very well supported in a town like Brighton.

"The problem with Worthing was that a full house was only about 1,200.

"Basketball in general is a booming sport. About 750,000 people play it in this country, which is a pretty large amount."

These days basketball, like so many other sports, is sold as an entertainment package.

No Sky-televised game is complete without cheerleaders, loud music and even firework displays.

The Brighton Centre would be able to provide all of that to a far larger audience.

But Rosemary Dawes, a Bears fan since she started taking her son to watch in the Eighties, thinks basketball clubs should remember their community base before spending fortunes on razzmatazz.

She said: "I'm disgusted at the idea behind the move. The right place for basketball to start if it wants to make it as a big sport is in small provincial towns like Worthing.

"Families come and watch and they create the atmosphere themselves, without the need for loads of gimmicks."

Rosemary, who lives in Goring, added: "Worthing's a basketball-mad town. You just have to look around and see the number of hoops people have outside their houses and the hundreds of youngsters who play it.

"When we used to get full houses lots of families came and watched. They came for good quality matches and that's what they got."

Around 80 per cent of Sussex's schoolchildren have basketball on the curriculum.

Chris Leggatt, who has watched the Bears for 14 years, said: "The children are going to be the ones who miss out. The adults can travel to Brighton.

"It's a pity for the people of Worthing, but the owners are moving us in the best interests of the club.

"Getting big crowds in to watch the team and having a good side are the most important things."

The Bears' glory days were the early Nineties. In the space of four years they won the league, the National Cup and end-of-season play-offs. They also got to the National Trophy final and third in the championship.

But crowds have reached as low as 500, making the move to Brighton seem the only economically viable option for the owners.

Mr Leggatt added: "People tend to forget that the club had bad times before the move to Worthing and all the glory days and it moved then.

"We need money to buy the best players and bring back success."

In the early Eighties the struggling Bears played games all around Sussex in an effort to ascertain the best site for a permanent home. They eventually chose Worthing because of its large and enthusiastic fan base.

Times have changed and, without a league football team in Brighton at the moment, now seems the perfect time to promote a new mass spectator sport to fill the void.

Mrs Dawes said: "You look at TV and see huge audiences at games, but these only tell half the story. When they're not on Sky the teams play at much smaller venues.

"Anyway, Brighton's got far too many other attractions already and the football's coming back soon.

"If fans go to football on a Saturday afternoon then they are hardly going to came and watch the bears in the evening."

Still, a reality in sport today is that Sky TV brings in an awful lot of money. Big city clubs get regular coverage.

The Worthing Leisure Centre is regarded by the company as having insufficient lighting to accommodate its crews.

Mr Leggatt said: "We want to get the crowds into the Brighton Centre and audiences on TV watching so more people can enjoy it. It's more of a package nowadays than it used to be."

The club's co-director, Christian Hamilton, refused to comment on the detailed proposals of the move, preferring to wait until a supporters' meeting on Wednesday night.

He said: "We want to bring success back to the Bears and we need to position the team so that we can achieve that."

The meeting takes place at The Burlington Hotel in Worthing at 8pm.

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