Since the Australian men’s basketball team made their Olympic debut in 1956, the Boomers had never won a medal. In Seoul 1988, Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000, they played for bronze – and came up short. At the Rio 2016 Olympics, the Boomers had the bronze medal snatched from their hands by Spain, and a questionable foul call, in a one-point defeat. Nor had the team ever won silverware at a basketball World Cup – in 2019 the Boomers reached the third-place play-off, and again went home empty-handed.
“It’s a lot of fourth,” says Luc Longley, a long-time Boomers member from the 1990s, in a new film in cinemas this week, Rose Gold. The feature-length documentary, by film-maker and former professional basketballer Matthew Adekponya, tells the story of the Boomers’ quest to go one better at the 2020 Olympics. Rose Gold is a moving tale of resilience, determination and a vibrant team culture that at long last ended the national team’s medal drought after 65 years.
