HE came for six months and stayed 18 years.
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When he arrived on the Border in 1994, Allen McCowan only ever planned on a quick trip Down Under, filling in time before a Major League Baseball tryout with the Cincinnati Reds.
But the explosive swingman found, to his pleasant surprise, he liked it here and just as crucially, we liked him.
From his first game in Bandits’ colours, McCowan endeared himself to the Border community, his high-flying, athletic style of play an instant hit.
And he was equally charming off the court, happy to interact with everyone, from innumerable budding basketballers — Lauren Jackson and Jessica Foley among them — to similarly awestruck adults, flashing a winning smile to all and sundry.
For me and my predecessors Jamie Horne and Peter Rolfe, all three of us basketball fans at heart, he was a media dream, never not available for a chat and always good for something interesting to say.
I’m almost certain he thought journalists were at least partially deaf, his softly spoken manner combined with a thick Kentucky accent meant I was forever asking him to repeat himself.
He revelled in the camaraderie of the team, the alpha male talking trash with anyone and everyone.
His favourite saying when he was at his peak — and even when he wasn’t — was “when in doubt, find No.24”.
Banter was second-nature to him and given our team rivalries — he loved the New York Yankees, I favoured the Boston Red Sox — we were always niggling each other.
And in 2006, that banter cost me dearly.
He had embraced Australian football, picking first-year team Fremantle on the logic that “we were both new to the country”.
And there was never a bigger Dockers fan this side of the Nullarbor.
So at the start of the 2006 season, there’s McCowan talking up the perennially underachieving Dockers — again.
“I’m telling you man, we’re gonna finish top-four! We’re a lock!”
Liking an occasional wager, my ears pricked up at this.
“OK Al, wanna bet?”
“Oh you’re on Smitty! What’re we gonna bet?”
“I reckon a nice new pair of Nike Air Jordans (a basketball shoe that retails for more than $200) should do it, Al.”
By round 13, I was home, the Dockers were out of the eight and fading rapidly, leading me to greet him with “Ten-and-a-half” (my shoe size) every time I saw him, and rest assured, I was making extra efforts to get to Bandits’ training sessions.
And then a funny thing happened.
The Dockers started winning. And winning. And winning.
They didn’t stop winning for the rest of the season, zooming to third place on the back of nine consecutive victories.
Ten straight, if you count McCowan’s win.
By that stage however, I had gone from hunting to hunted, the relentless McCowan giving me hell at every opportunity, “Oh how you like us now Smitty?” a particular favourite.
His grin when I handed over a pair of crisp new shoes said it all.
Among his Bandits teammates he was famously a non-swimmer, never getting his head under water in a 25-metre lap pool, earning for a time the moniker of “Eric the Eel”.
McCowan was a fierce competitor on the basketball court — his elbows the sharpest in the league — and, as he noted last year when talking about the 2001 title team, he would do anything to win.
“That whole group came together and said ‘whatever it takes’,” McCowan said.
“Whatever it took to get the job done, no one cared who did what, we said we’d play team defence and that was the biggest key, that everyone said they’d all do the little things.
“And looking back, that was definitely the most satisfying memory.”
Even as his elite-level career wound down — a hip complaint robbed him of much of his athleticism — he was still a canny and effective player, leading fellow Bandit Nick Payne to joke that “no one in the history of basketball ever got more rebounds without jumping”.
Since 2007, a group of former and current SEABL players, along with a few very average players, yours truly among them, hit the Border each year to play in the annual Twin Cities Basketball Classic.
McCowan was one of the founding members of the Swamp Donkeys, joking that he would only play if all he had to do was shoot three-pointers.
Which he did. In copious amounts.
It didn’t matter if you’d known him five minutes or five years, he made people feel like he was your closest friend.
I can’t believe he’s gone.
And I, like everyone else who ever had the privilege of knowing Allen McCowan, miss him like hell already.