Who says size doesn't matter in basketball? A player who at the end of last year could not command a place in the starting five of the Edinburgh Burger Kings junior side and will not be 17 until December has been called into the Scotland team for this weekend's Four Countries Under-23 Championship in Ware, Herts.
He will join a side which includes several players who have represented Scotland at senior level including Ross Szifris, Keith Bunyan and Campbell Flockhart.
Young Ronnie Gordon is 6ft 8in tall, an asset which other sports, notably football and rugby also find appealing. Indeed the Peebles High schoolboy has already featured in goal for the Alloa Athletic reserve team.
It is not surprising though that the West Linton lad favours the hoops game. His father Ronnie was a stalwart of Edinburgh Hornets and Pentland and also represented Scotland and Great Britain.
Ronnie junior was called into the Scottish Under-18 team for the Four Countries Tournament in Aberdeen last month and, by all accounts, was a success. However, his selection for Ware, where he replaces Neil Dickson (Midlothian Bulls), who injured ankle ligaments last weekend, is still a surprise as he has not been training with the squad.
''It came right out of the blue,'' admitted Gordon.
Coach Toni Szifris, who had been impressed with the way Gordon performed for him in Kings' winning Scottish Under-23 Cup final team, explained simply: ''We needed the height.''
There is no question of Gordon's selection being a long-term development move however as Scotland have only taken 10 players south for their three games. ''I simply want to make sure we win as many as possible,'' added Szifris, who had created controversy by omitting any Glasgow Sports Division players from his line-up.
In fact with the previous withdrawal of Alastair Rae and now Dickson, Midlothian Bull Bobby Cosgrove is the only West of Scotland-based player in the 10.
Scotland play Ireland today and Wales tomorrow with hopes of victory in both games.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article