The Wollongong Hawks have made an art form of silencing their critics.After the club did the seemingly impossible by surviving last year's near-death experience, coach Gordie McLeod and his tenacious team then went and won 16 games to claim second spot when most tipsters had them finishing dead last.Tonight, the Hawks embark on a new journey with the opening game of a best-of-three semi-final series with Townsville at WIN Entertainment Centre.
Full coverage of the Wollongong Hawks VOTE IN POLL: Will Wollongong win the best-of-three series against Townsville?They are $1.33 favourites with TAB Sportsbet, but the Hawks will approach the game with their usual underdog mentality."Everything we've done all season, it kind of feels like people have had an excuse or reason as to why we've had success," Wollongong's do-it-all centre Larry Davidson said."When we've stumbled a bit, people have been all over us. It hasn't bothered us, but now we've got a chance to show what we've been doing all season hasn't been a fluke or one-off, and that we're a legit team that can win it."I don't read the papers or watch the news or any of that, so the opinion I've got of this team is based on what I know of the people on this team and around the team. Outside people are entitled to their opinion, but they don't know really know what this group can do. Now it's just another chance to keep proving people wrong."The Hawks' against-the-odds quest for an NBL title has captured the city's imagination and a near-capacity crowd is expected tonight."You can't walk down the street without people stopping you and talking about it, which is pretty exciting. Talking about the finals is better than talking about whether the team's going to be around next season," Davidson said."A lot of the fans have crept out of the woodwork that I didn't know were fans, but you prefer that than not having any talk about it."At the start of the season, no-one thought this would happen, so I guess we've got a chance to do something that no-one thought we could, which is always fun."There was definitely a chance for us after a couple of those big defeats to throw it in and be satisfied with the good run we had. But we wanted to finish the season out well and see what happened. We've been in some good form lately and we're all pretty excited about it because it's a good opportunity for us."
