Danny Morseu (born 1 January 1958) is an Australian

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

player who played on the Australian national basketball team in the

1980 Summer Olympics The 1980 Summer Olympics (russian: Летние Олимпийские игры 1980, Letniye Olimpiyskiye igry 1980), officially known as the Games of the XXII Olympiad (russian: Игры XXII Олимпиады, Igry XXII Olimpiady) and commo ...

and 1984 Summer Olympics.

International career

Morseu played for the Australian team at the

1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow __NOTOC__ Year 198 (CXCVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Sergius and Gallus (or, less frequently, year 951 ''Ab u ...

, where Australia finished eighth, and at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, where Australia finished seventh, their best Olympic result to that date. The Australian team has since finished fourth on two occasions; Seoul in 1988 and Sydney in 2000 He also played twelve world cup matches for Australia.

Club career

Torres Strait Islander Torres Strait Islanders () are the Indigenous Melanesian people of the Torres Strait Islands, which are part of the state of Queensland, Australia. Ethnically distinct from the Aboriginal people of the rest of Australia, they are often grou ...

, Morseu was born in 1958 on

Thursday Island Thursday Island, colloquially known as TI, or in the Kawrareg dialect, Waiben or Waibene, is an island of the Torres Strait Islands, an archipelago of at least 274 small islands in the Torres Strait. TI is located approximately north of Cap ...

Far North Queensland Far North Queensland (FNQ) is the northernmost part of the Australian state of Queensland. Its largest city is Cairns and it is dominated geographically by Cape York Peninsula, which stretches north to the Torres Strait, and west to the Gulf ...

. He spent his childhood in Tamwoy, a mission on Thursday Island, where he grew up without running water or electricity. He started playing basketball at school and despite being cut from his primary school team, he developed into a tall talented teenage athlete. After completing school he moved to Cairns where he played basketball and

rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 112 ...

for local teams. Morseu attracted the attention of National Basketball League coach Brian Kerle after playing a match against Kerle's club, the Melbourne-based St Kilda Saints – on tour of North Queensland. Kerle convinced Morseu to move to Melbourne in 1978, where he played in St Kilda's championship winning teams of 1979 and 1980. He played 217 NBL games in total, winning another NBL championship with the

Brisbane Bullets The Brisbane Bullets are an Australian professional men's basketball team in the National Basketball League (NBL) based in Brisbane, Queensland. They competed from 1979 to 2008, and returned to the league in 2016. Brisbane were one of ten NBL f ...

in 1987. In December 2017, Morseu was appointed head coach of the Toowoomba Mountaineers QBL men's side, the team he won a championship with in 1991.

Later biography

In 1984, he completed a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

majoring in recreation from

Footscray Institute of Technology Victoria University (VU or Vic Uni) is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It is one of only six dual-sector universities in Australia, providing courses in both higher education and Technical and Further ...

. He was employed in a range of activities for state and federal governments in Victoria and Queensland, including working in indigenous health. He has acted as a mentor for other indigenous basketball players such as Nathan Jawai and Patty Mills.

Awards

Inducted into the NBL Hall of Fame in 2002, Morseu was the first indigenous basketballer so honoured. He was inducted into the ''Victoria University Sport Hall of Fame'' in 2007.

Personal

Morseu is the uncle of Australian Boomers players Patty Mills and Nathan Jawai.Indigenous basketballer Nathan Jawai shoots for top
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References

External links

NBL stats
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morseu, Danny 1958 births Living people Australian men's basketball coaches Australian men's basketball players 1978 FIBA World Championship players Basketball players at the 1980 Summer Olympics Basketball players at the 1984 Summer Olympics Brisbane Bullets players Forwards (basketball) Geelong Supercats players Indigenous Australian Olympians Indigenous Australian basketball players Olympic basketball players of Australia Sportsmen from Queensland Torres Strait Islanders Victoria University, Melbourne alumni