By Phil Ravitz TONY Garbelotto, head coach of London United, the Hackney based former British Basketball League outfit and senior coach to Hackney College s community programmes, is heading up the Everton Tigers bid for BBL honours in the coming season.

By Phil Ravitz

TONY Garbelotto, head coach of London United, the Hackney based former British Basketball League outfit and senior coach to Hackney College's community programmes, is heading up the Everton Tigers' bid for BBL honours in the coming season.

Hackney born Garbelotto, also number two in the Great Britain national set-up, agreed to take over as head coach of the year-old Tigers franchise on Merseyside, at the end of last season, and is now really stepping up the task of making them a power in the sport.

With no real moves to revive the Hackney College based London United franchise for the upcoming season - as was mooted when the club closed 15 months ago - Garbelotto was compelled to find a coaching post outside London and the Tigers, an overshoot of Premier League Everton FC and also owned by Bill Kenwright, the theatre impresario, came calling.

The Tigers are an amalgam of the famous football club's organisation and the Toxteth Tigers Basketball Club, who ran a community programme in one of Liverpool's most notorious areas. They became the fifth club in BBL history to become an off-shoot of a professional football club.

After a reasonable first season, Everton Tigers have turned to Garbelotto to provide vital experience - he formerly coached Newcastle Eagles to their first BBL Championships and Birmingham Bullets - before London United.

Garbelotto has already recruited the Merseyside born giant Chris Haslam, the GB international who was one of his mainstays at London United two seasons ago, onto his playing roster at Everton, who play in the 6,000 seater capacity Greenbank Arena, but have also used the new Liverpool Echo Arena for their higher profile matches at the end of last season.