Portsmouth (basketball)

Portsmouth F.C. Basketball Club are a British professional basketball team based in Portsmouth, Hampshire, that played in the top league of UK basketball from 1985-88. They won the league championship in the 1986-87 and 1987-88 seasons and also reached four major cup finals, including those of all three main domestic knockout competitions in 1987-88.

Virtually all home games were played at the Mountbatten Centre in Portsmouth, which had bleacher seating on either side plus a balcony around one end and one side. Part of the side balcony was reserved for directors and guests. Two matches in 1986-87 and two in 1984-85 were hosted by Havant Leisure Centre (eight miles away), one in 1984-85 by Fleming Park Leisure Centre in Eastleigh (23 miles) and one in 1984-85 by Winchester Recreation Centre (30 miles).

The club was created when Portsmouth Football Club chairman John Deacon, having failed in a 9 January 1985 bid to buy Eastleigh-based Solent Stars, instead bought another top division club, Telford Turbos, on 16 January and moved it to Portsmouth midway through the 1984-85 season.

For an undisclosed sum, Deacon acquired a range of basketball equipment, nine players - Dave Treasure, Steve Nelson, Pat Morrison, Marty Headd (later replaced by Mike Owen), Ian Pollard, Lee Irwin, Dave Harris, Julian Taithe and Dale Shackleford- and the franchise of a club lying bottom of the table after losing all of its 13 league matches up until that point.

With no relegation planned from the top division that season, he did not plan an extensive revamp of the team, but he did recruit Danny Palmer as coach on 17 January.

In the longer term the club, officially known as Portsmouth FC Basketball Club but simply 'Portsmouth' for promotional purposes, would have its office and players' base at Portsmouth FC's Fratton Park stadium, and use the Mountbatten Centre as its regular home court.

But to begin with the players remained based in the Midlands and football club secretary Bill Davis was handed the responsibility of finding dates and venues for the team's eight remaining home games.

Their first appearance under the Portsmouth FC banner was an away game on 19 January at Solent, who had gone to Telford earlier in the season and beaten them 123-87 in a match played in a former aircraft hangar.

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