Ed Space
When Mat Campbell first arrived in the Illawarra, it certainly wasn't a case of love at first sight for some local fans.
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Former Hawks coach Brendan Joyce had won a SEABL championship with Campbell at Ballarat and brought him to Wollongong to play in the NBL alongside another former Bendigo junior, Glen Saville.
While Campbell would go on to become one of the most loved and revered figures at the only remaining foundation club in the National Basketball League, it was a tough introduction for the man known simply as "Soup" (a play on his last name).
"They used to yell out 'stop playing your son'," Joyce remembers with a chuckle.
"He had to cop all that and wasn't loved at the beginning because I guess people thought he was taking the spot of a local player. It built a resilience within him. All of a sudden he had to play under adversity. He had to get through that.
"Once we got to the play-offs and he and Sav were playing 35 minutes, everyone was talking about what a great future we had."
That future of course led to the club's only championship in 2001 when Campbell and Saville stood side-by-side as captains. Both would go on to have their jerseys retired to the rafters and be considered club legends.
On Friday, Soup stepped down as the club's general manager, but will remain directly involved in assisting the club in an ambassador role.
That trademark resilience was on show from Campbell as he helped steer the club through not one, but two near-death experiences.
Campbell was very much the public face of the Save Our Hawks campaign in 2009 and then this year had to navigate the club to new owners after the ownership of Simon Stratford collapsed into receivership just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Through those incredibly tumultuous times, he has been a constant in getting the club through to the next stage of its life.
"I always say when you go through adversity, it doesn't create character, it shows character," Joyce said on Friday.
"I think he had that character. He had that resilience from a young age."
The club will always owe a debt of gratitude to a man who is now, quite comfortably, the Illawarra's son.
Julian O'Brien is the editor of the Illawarra Mercury
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Julian O'Brien
Editor of the Illawarra Mercury and former editor of The Advocate (North-West Tasmania). Journalism is simply about telling good stories well and we do so now across a broader platform than ever before. Our role as a regional masthead is to not only share the stories our readers care about but to be a passionate torch bearers for community at every opportunity. We are stronger together.
Editor of the Illawarra Mercury and former editor of The Advocate (North-West Tasmania). Journalism is simply about telling good stories well and we do so now across a broader platform than ever before. Our role as a regional masthead is to not only share the stories our readers care about but to be a passionate torch bearers for community at every opportunity. We are stronger together.
