Like the Steelers and the Wolves before them, the Wollongong Hawks yesterday succumbed to the financial reality of being a little fish in the big pond of a national competition.
Wollongong's last national sporting team will not exist next season. The ownership group has decided not to apply for a place in the NewNBL in 2009-10.
Confirmation yesterday of the Hawks' demise means Wollongong has gone from three teams in national competitions to none within a decade.
"Wollongong losing a national sporting team really hurts," Hawks chairman Richard Clifford said. "It was one of my major motivations for getting involved in the first place. It's something I felt was very important for the economy, and for all the people in the city."
A part of Wollongong's soul and identity disappears with the Hawks.
The glory days of the 1990s, with professional teams in rugby league, football and basketball seem a world away with the St George Illawarra Dragons really only paying lip service to a region with a rich sporting fabric.
"We are essentially still a community-based team, although it is a private ownership group," Clifford said.
"We hold (the team in trust) for the community, there's no glory for us owning the Hawks.
"And that's the very problem we are faced with, the professionalism of basketball."
The Hawks have played in all 31 NBL seasons and were the last link to the 10-team competition which started in 1979.
Basketball Australia chief executive Scott Derwin believed there was still a place for Wollongong in the new competition, even if they couldn't fulfil all the requirements.
"The NBL is the shopfront of basketball in this country and Wollongong has a part in that," Derwin said.
"We want (the NBL) to be strong and simply can't have teams falling over and that's why we had strong financial requirements. We are very disappointed at the Hawks' decision.
"We had urged them to put a non-conforming application forward, which we would have considered, but they decided not to do that."
The Hawks won the NBL championship in 2001 but it has been a slow decline since.
They were bailed out by community support last year when they appeared certain to fold, but this time there was no way out for Australia's longest-running basketball franchise.
The new NBL competition requirements of a $1 million bank guarantee and $500,000 working capital were too tough for the Hawks' owners.
"We have everything going for us, except the extra financial backing required for the new competition," Clifford said.
"In recent years the NBL has had five teams fold, and yet they want to raise the bar at a time when economic conditions are very tough, affecting sponsorship and attendances at games.
"It doesn't make a lot of sense, from our perspective."
The Hawks will play their last game on the Gold Coast on Valentine's Day, and their last home game the night before, against Adelaide.
"We are announcing this now so that the fans get an opportunity to say goodbye to the team," Clifford said. "And it gives anyone who is a would-be white knight a chance to come out and help us, but the reality is that will not happen."
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