BASKETBALL
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Prodigious shooter Kirk Penney will make his first appearance in Illawarra Hawks colours in Sunday's trial against the Adelaide 36ers at Nowra.
Still going strong at 34, Penney arrived in Wollongong earlier this month but didn't travel to North Queensland for last weekend's trials against the Cairns Taipans.
The former New Zealand Tall Blacks star trained strongly this week and is expected to debut off the bench in the Sunday afternoon clash with the 36ers.
"He rested last weekend, just to avoid doing any damage to his body after flying from the [United] States, but I'm pretty sure he should be right to play," Illawarra point guard Rhys Martin said.
"He looks good in training and I'm excited to play with the guy."
The battle with the Sixers marks the first time the new-look Hawks will line up with their entire 10-man team.
Illawarra lost last Friday's first game against Cairns 101-91 and went down 88-84 in Sunday's meeting.
"It was a good first proper hit-out for us against an NBL team," Martin said.
"There was some positives and negatives in the games. Obviously our defence wasn't great. We improved and made some adjustments in the second game and tried out some new things.
"Offensively we only ran one play the whole time. We put up 80 points-plus in both games and the defence knew what we were running.
"We had a lot of different looks out of that one offence and the focus was to work on different options, seeing what guys' strengths are and what works well.
"For an experimental game and the fact we're putting in a new system, we did a good job."
Martin expects Sunday's contest to entertain the crowd.
"It's going to be a 'track meet'," he said.
"They're going to get up and down and run hard. They're not afraid to give up points to get points and they want to play quick. It should be an interesting game.
"It's just going to be fun to have the whole group together for the first time in a game, and we can start building hopefully for a good season."
Illawarra tip off their season on October 11 with a road game against Melbourne.
Martin is confident the Hawks will be a more harmonious unit than they were last season.
"There's always going to be issues throughout the year, but with the group we have this year we don't have any issues off court," he said. "We all get along and that's a big part of playing team sport."