Basketball On The Internet.

IT is an honour and privilege to represent your country on an international stage.

Heard that before? It’s because it’s true.

No player is bigger than the team/the game/the sport.

Heard that before? Yes. It’s also true.

Liz Cambage is 23, 203cm and has enjoyed a great deal of success in a short space of time.

Unfortunately, when you become a little larger-than-life, you can make decisions that will haunt you, such as missing last weekend’s Opals training camp for a “work commitment” at a Byron Bay music festival.

The July 25-26 camp, ahead of this week’s matches against Japan and the two-game Oceania Series with New Zealand next month, was common knowledge in the Opals camp.

Attendance was a requirement, players informed in mid-November, the dates reiterated in January, in March and updated again more recently.

Cambage ruptured an Achilles tendon last year, a week out from the FIBA Women’s World Championship.

Despite losing her at the tournament’s doorstep - and already without fellow London Olympians such as Lauren Jackson, Suzy Batkovic, Jenni Screen, Kristi Harrower - coach Brendan Joyce somehow fashioned a bronze medal Opals’ performance.

No player is bigger than the sport. Pretty sure that World Championship proved that.

“Lizzie hasn’t played for 11 months so she needed to be part of the (July 25-26) camp,” Joyce said. “We were prepared to compromise on Saturday but she needed to train at our Sunday night session.

“We couldn’t put her in the team for Japan and Oceania without medical clearance and we couldn’t get that unless she trained on Sunday.”

Basketball Australia was ready to compromise the Saturday session by offering to pay her flights back to Melbourne on Sunday.

Cambage opted to stay for the full festival and now, in the aftermath of her decision, is threatening “legal action” against BA and to petition the board for reinstatement. Say what?

“I will make a submission to the Basketball Australia board urgently on why I believe I should be considered for team selection and to again reiterate that I had a paid job that I needed to fulfil on Sunday which I had committed to before the camp dates were formally locked in,” Cambage told News Corp at the Herald-Sun on Monday.

Actually, the dates were “locked in” last November and Opals players informed.

“Liz is a young woman who has made a mistake and as far as I’m concerned, better now than later,” a conciliatory Joyce said.

“The type of mistake it is, I don’t think it can’t be managed and rectified over time.”

Let’s hope it is, and soon.

At a time when the national programs should be flying ahead of the Opals-Tall Ferns and Boomers-Tall Blacks matches on the Nine Network, this is a blip no-one needed.

Cambage can fix it in a heartbeat. And if, as she says, her heart beats to represent Australia, then accepting responsibility for a misjudgement, abandoning headline-grabbing but largely idle legal action threats and focusing on playing a major role in Rio should be her priorities.

Online

Opals beat Japan: http://bit.ly/1gi74on

My News Corp Comment: http://bit.ly/1JrlPk2