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Donal Scully

THE Asian Basketball Confederation, the game's regional governing body, will launch a continental clubs' championship in 1995, a move detrimental to the plans of two regional leagues planned by independent operators.

   The new championship undercuts the claims of American promoter and former US congressman, Ralph Harding, of having the ABC's backing for his own Asian league.

 Harding has been struggling for nearly three years to pull together a package of team owners for his six-city league which includes Hong Kong.

     This new ABC competition, for national club champions, was born of a ground-breaking US$4.2 million four-year marketing deal signed during the ABC's congress in Hong Kong over the weekend.

 The deal, with Hong Kong-based ABC Promotions, guarantees funding for all ABC tournaments plus cash for coaching clinics.

   However, the ABC's Asian clubs' championship pre-empts all Harding's efforts as it will be an exclusive event which means no other pan-Asian club project, Harding's included, can get the ABC's sanction.

 ''For the first year we anticipate six or eight national club champions playing in one venue,'' ABC general secretary Mauricio Martelino said of the new championship.

 The long-term target is a 32-team home-and-away knockout event culminating in a US-style Final Four.

   The announcement of the new championship marks a breakthrough in the seemingly interminable log-jam of would-be Asian leagues which have been promised but not delivered over the past three years.

   One obstacle to progress in those years was the fact that the ABC's endorsement, had already been given to a planned six-team league, called the Asian Basketball Association (ABA), owned by the ABC's president Carl Ching Men-ky of Hong Kong. That leaguenever took off.

  Ching's main rival was the American Harding who was planning his own league with teams in the same six cities.

 Harding spent the past two years at loggerheads with Ching but after the weekend's congress in Hong Kong, he changed his tune and claimed that Ching had transferred the ABA name to him, passing on the ABC's endorsement as well.

  ''It has been a great weekend for basketball in Asia. Now that we have Carl's support his supporters in the confederation are our supporters,'' Harding said.

 Not so, says the ABC. All Harding bought was the ABA name, but the endorsement does not go with it.

 And if Harding goes ahead with an unauthorised league then the players and officials involved may be banned from all FIBA events and the Olympics.

  ''Ralph Harding can never claim that the ABC endorsed his plans because he never made a presentation to the congress,'' Martelino said.

 Late last night Harding was unavailable to comment on the ABC's rebuttal of his claims.

    Yet another league, proposed by an Australian group, plans to operate in three Asian countries plus Australia and New Zealand.

 This group are undeterred by the threat of ABC or FIBA sanctions.



ABC deal scuppers Harding