Flinny 500: from a courtside wheelchair to the Hawks bench

Early 1980s, the Snakepit. A young Matt Flinn is laid up with a severe leg injury after a BMX accident. His parents decide a night at the basketball in the "new" Snakepit might cheer him up. Wheelchair space at Beaton Park is tight, so his chair ends up parked right on the edge of the court.

The Snakepit had a ritual back then, one that ran for decades. As the players were introduced, each would jog over to a random fan for a high five, or give away a mini ball. That night, Gordie McLeod ran straight to the boy in the wheelchair.

His family were involved in lots of sports. His dad started coaching junior basketball at Wollongong Police Boys Club with boys from Gwynneville P.S. in 1970. He then moved to coaching Illawarra juniors with encouragement from great Ted Weston. His older brother Scott had already started playing and Matt being very competitive was frustrated by being in a wheelchair. Basketball became a part of his life from that night on.

Now the boy is about to reach 500 games with the Illawarra Hawks. He’ll get there in Cairns, and Gordie will be there to see it, on the same weekend he turns 70. Boyhood idol. Then mentor. Now friend. It’s been quite a run from that first high five.

A Wollongong Kid With a Jump Shot

Mathew Flinn was born in Wollongong on 22 January 1972 and came up through the Illawarra junior program. He represented New South Wales several times and captained the state’s under-20 side in 1991.

He made his NBL debut for Illawarra on 21 August 1992, aged 20, and scored three points. Over the next three seasons he played 31 games in Hawks colours, and the club made the finals every one of those years.He could shoot it, too. In 1993 he knocked down 9 of his 20 attempts from three, 45 per cent, and was runner up to Andrew Gaze in the 3pt shoot out at the All-Star weekend.  He dropped a career-high 14 points along the that year too.

Then came 10 games with Townsville in 1995, one season with the Cairns Marlins in the CBA, and a homecoming in 1998. That year Illawarra went 20 and 2 in the NSW State League and beat Bankstown 79 to 59 in the grand final. Flinn was on the floor for it.

So when the 500th comes up in Cairns, it’s not foreign soil. He spent a season there in a Marlins singlet before the coaching ever started.

The Teacher

Flinn was already thinking past his own playing days. He studied a Bachelor of Education at the University of Wollongong in 1997 and became a PE teacher and head basketball coach at Illawarra Sports High School.Among the kids he coached there: Tyson Demos, Dan Jackson and Kane Riley-Henderson, all future NBL players.

It’s worth sitting on that for a second. Before he ever held a clipboard in the NBL, he was teaching teenagers how to play the right way. That habit never really left him.

The Long Apprenticeship

In 2007/08, Flinn joined Eric Cooks’ coaching staff at the Hawks. He stayed through Gordie McLeod and Rob Beveridge, and kept on showing up, through the money troubles, the near-folding, the “Save the Hawks” rescue and everything after it.

More than 350 consecutive NBL games as an assistant. Not a typo. Consecutive.

Add his playing days and Flinn had been part of eight Hawks playoff campaigns and three Grand Finals, the underdog run of 2009/10, the Beveridge side of 2016/17 and the 2024/25 Champship team.

For six of those seasons, he sat beside McLeod. The man who ran to the wheelchair was now the head coach, and the kid in it was his assistant.

The Night He Suited Up Again

Then there’s the one nobody saw coming.On 14 January 2011, with an injury-hit Hawks squad short of bodies on the road in Perth, Flinn the assistant coach became Flinn the player again. He was 38. He played two minutes and took one shot.

The stat sheet doesn’t care much about that night. The record books do. His previous NBL game had come for Townsville back in 1995, more than 15 years earlier, and the gap was recognised as an NBL record for the longest time between professional games.Two minutes. Fifteen years in the making.

The Big Chair

The 2019/20 season handed Flinn the head coaching job, and with it, the strangest season in club history.

LaMelo Ball arrived through the Next Stars program and the whole basketball world followed him to Wollongong. Flinn helped recruit him and guided him through his first taste of professional basketball. Ball became the youngest player in NBL history to post a triple-double, won Rookie of the Year and went third in the NBA Draft.

The season itself didn’t go to plan. Ball’s foot injury ended his year after 12 games, Aaron Brooks went down with an Achilles injury, and the Hawks finished 5 and 23. Flinn had signed a three-year deal, but the club went into voluntary administration in April 2020, new owners came in, and Brian Goorjian took over the bench.

That’s the business. Flinn didn’t sulk about it. He went to work.

North, Then Home

In 2021, the Darwin Salties named him their first NBL1 North men’s head coach.

He built that program from nothing. Darwin made the playoffs in each of his three seasons, and in 2024 finished second at 13 and 4. One of the players he worked with up there was a defensive dynamo by the name of Wani Swaka Lo Buluk.

In August 2024, Mat Campbell brought him home. Justin Tatum was heading into his first full season as head coach and wanted experience beside him. Flinn said at the time he was “eager to return to the Illawarra region and the program he loves”.

What followed was the greatest season the Hawks have ever had. First place on the ladder for the first time in club history. Then the NBL25 championship.

A life long learner, he hasn’t slowed down since. In 2025 he took over Illawarra’s NBL1 East men’s side, a team that had gone 2 and 18 the year before, and turned it into a 15 and 5 minor premier that reached the grand final.

In 2026 they went 16 and 4, finished on top again, and Flinn was named NBL1 East Men’s Coach of the Year.

Five Hundred

So here’s how the number breaks down. Thirty-two games as a player. Twenty-eight as head coach. The rest from the assistant’s chair, across two stints.

Five hundred games as a Hawk.

When the Hawks take the floor in Cairns, there’s a fair chance Flinny will glance up into the crowd and find the bloke who once ran to a kid in a wheelchair. Happy 70th, Gordie. And congratulations, Flinny.

From all of us, thanks for sticking around.

BE ONE OF US TOO

From a courtside wheelchair at the Snakepit to 500 games on our bench, Flinny has been one of us from the start.

However you follow the Hawks, there’s a membership built for you.

‍Flexi 3 or 5 gets you into any 3 or 5 games of your choice, your call, whenever suits.

Be a Hawkhead, because there’s no wrong way to show up, only a right one for you.

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Game Preview

Hawks at Cairns | Rd8 NBL27

Then home to the Sandpit

The road run finishes in Perth on Saturday 14 November, then we are back at WIN Entertainment Centre on Thursday 19 November for Indigenous Round against Adelaide. If you want to be courtside and part of the action.

• Hollywood seats
• Tickets from $30
• Family is just $99
• Flexi 3 or 5

STRONGER. LOUDER. TOGETHER.

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