Basketball On The Internet.

THEY say the two certainties in life are death and taxes but in the case of Ian Thornton, there were a few more. "Did you hear the one about the Irishman, the Englishman and the Scotsman who walk into a bar?" That was the other certainty. 

Ian always had a good new (or sometimes old enough to have been forgotten and recycled again!) joke to share a laugh with you. Or that knowing half-smile that would lead to a long conversation in which first we'd solve the problems plaguing basketball, the 36ers or the Lightning, before emboldened we'd have the answers for all the issues the world was facing! Remedies which always ended in laughter.

His death earlier this month at 82 is one of those that again gives you pause to wonder if you ever said enough, if you ever said how much someone might have meant to you, even if you only saw them in passing. Or how much you appreciated what they did for the game, this game we all love.

Whenever I think about the Norwood Basketball Club, three men usually come to mind - Bryan Hennig, Ron Merton and Ian Thornton.

They personified the red-and-blue of Norwood and were the trio who most would have delighted in the club's historic first championship in the summer season of 1967.

Norwood existed long before that, Ian playing for the club in its days at the Old Boys Institute in the 1950s and then serving in the club's administration, much of it as president.

Ahead of the 1967 Summer Season - back when South Australia had two major seasons for elite basketball - the powerful Hungarian-based Budapest club merged with Norwood.

While a multiple championship-winner in the early 1960s, Budapest could see the end in sight as Hungarian youths found their own amusements. The plan was to merge with Norwood - the Hungarian Club House was in Norwood - and after a few years "Norwood Budapest" would simply be Norwood again.

That 1967 Summer was the club's first as Norwood Budapest so winning the Summer Season, beating the Werner Linde-led West Bearcats and the star-studded South Adelaide of the Michael Ahmatt-Scott Davie-Dean Whitford triumvirate in the preliminary and grand finals was an exciting new high.

Ian remembered it well, my father driving the two-club merger, four of my brothers starring in those finals.

Norwood became "the Flames" under Ian's watch, having never truly embraced its post-Budapest nickname of "the Rams" and one inappropriate as the club also grew on the women's side.

Women's championships and a period of unprecedented success followed Ian during his years at Norwood, that same success following him into and through his extended period as chairman of the WNBL's Adelaide Lightning.

Serving also in a variety of administrative and management capacities for the Basketball Association of SA, his Life Membership of the association in 2002 was really a little overdue.

The self-proclaimed and founding member of the "Grumpy Old Men's Club" Ian did enjoy pretending to be grumpy. But that is all it was, a pretence. Rarely could you hope to meet a more jovial and confirmed bachelor than Ian.

For years he occupied the same season ticketed seat at Adelaide 36ers games at the Clipsal Powerhouse, waving whenever he arrived and we made eye contact across a usually sold-out NBL venue.

Grumpy? Nah, not likely.

A gentleman with a love of our game and a wicked sense of humour?

Yes. That is how I will remember and recall Ian Thornton, another of the pioneers who built basketball in South Australia. 

His funeral will be held on Friday from 2:30pm at Alfred James Funeral Home (344 Henley Beach Road, Lockleys). May he Rest in Peace.