Well, I guess in a way it was nice to leave Townsville with the weather that we were having as it wasn't going to ease at all.
 
The road trip they call the dooms day double!! I guess there is a reason why they call it that as it’s the worst road trip of all, going to Adelaide and then not even 36 hours later we were off to Perth.
 
We lost Flanny and Schatz at training on Thursday night before we left but thought our court leader would be fine for the game and just a little sore in the calf, nothing that a little stretch wouldn't fix and Schatz was a little tweek in her back as she put her bag in the car after training on Tuesday!! (Schatz we have told you to get a smaller handbag)!!!
 
Off to the airport for our big trip in such a short time.   
 
We arrived safely into the city of churches without any hitches except that we had to drive 3 cars and I'm sure some of the girls were scared that I was driving! but let me tell you I am a safe driver, remember we use to have the grand prix there so have driven on the track a few times!!!
 
Lucky us we went to the hotel which happened to be on the best street in Adelaide HINDLEY ST! I say that with sarcasm as in the past it has been known for stabbings or drive bys so I warned Annette that there was no way that she would be going to the local laundry mat on a Saturday after our game if she wished to survive her first road trip.
 
We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and headed out the the Flanagan's place.  Her parents put on a lovely spread for us and we rolled out of there a couple of hours later because we had eaten so much food.  Back to the hotel for our team meeting as there were just not enough hours in the day on the Saturday. 
 
We were up at the crack of dawn for breakfast followed by an hour shoot around.  Then 4 of us needed to head to the physio, who actually use to be the physio of the Fire when she lived here in Townsville. That ended up being a little longer than hoped as Amy was getting the low down on her calf and the same for Flanny which ended up not the news she wanted to hear "not playing against Adelaide".  I guess I was keeping the other 2 entertained in being a window model and seeing if anyone would believe I was real or fake!!!! Well - I kept the girls in high spirits and nearly convinced this lady on the footpath!!  Schatz had little bit of treatment and I was just getting a little rub down just to keep the old body going and now that flanny wasn't playing it would be between Tanya, Nekes and myself fighting for the role to run the team!! I think I lost out before I got the chance!
 
The other girls went back to hotel to shower and eat pre-game and then for a nap before the game.  We got back and had a bite to eat then went had a rest before the game.   When we woke up we went for a little stroll down Hindley Street but were fairly quick as there are all kinds hanging out!! Roey, Chez and I went into a local 24 hour supermarket to be followed in by a couple.  They went straight over to where the sandwiches were and I said to myself, “self I bet they steal them” but the guy in the shop was onto it and was watching them like a hawk.  Sure enough she had put it in her bag and stole it. That would be the 1st time I saw Roey stand back and watch from the corner.
 
The game well what can I say other than it was a disappointment of how we all turned up to play or should I say didn't turn up to play. I don't think we could have played any worse but still only lost by 3.  The worse thing about the game was that if we had played like we have in other games we could have beaten them by 15.  That was a big lesson learnt and the only thing we could do is that Sunday was a new day and we had to play like the Townsville McCafe Fire and redeem ourselves.
  
We flew out at 7:30 am and were on the same flight as the Hill Top Hoods (an Adelaide Band) heading off to Perth for the Big Day Out on Sunday.  Also on the plane was Shaun Tait an Aussie cricketer so that more than brightened up our morning.  We left at 7:30 and arrived at 8:30 am and went to a ladies house called Donna Ironmonger and her kids and they put on the best spread from fruit, dip and biscuits to pasta, crumbed steaks and chicken, salad, trifle and ice-cream cake which was just stunning.  So by the time we finished we rolled to different parts of the house to have a nap.   Flanny decided that she wasn't playing so she would read Twilight-New moon to Nekes, Amy and myself until I got bored and fell asleep!!
 
We ventured off the Perry Lakes for the last game of all time at this particular stadium as they will be moving to a new big complex next season.  We get there a little early but that was good as we had time to take a few shots before the game and improve on our 27% shooting percentage against the Lightning!!  We started the game well and just plugged away and pulled away from them in the second half which is what we needed to do and the shooting % went up to 57 which was much better. We won 96-57. but the worse was yet to come which was the red eye flight home leaving at 11:20 pm and got into Brisbane at 6ish and then getting into Townsville at 8:30am Monday  -  so a very long day.
 
Now we have 2 more games till the finals come and these two are both at home against Sydney and Bendigo.

The Townsville fire are back into our routine after a 12 day well deserved break. Training on the 2nd of Jan made it a bit hard to bring in the New Year especially for an old girl like me. Starting with two 2 and half hrs of training in one day, WOW, if you didnt do any conditioning during the break well the coach would soon find out. We started of a bit rusty making alot of turnovers but eventually we got ballling.
 
Having a good week of training we defeated Dandenong on Sat 9th by 22pts. I mean the turnovers were really high but we still got the Win.

Back on court the next day(Sun) muscles were a little weary from the night before. but we knew we had to train because we have a short week this week so we wanted to get into this training and get ourselves ready, with recovery of course - oh those ice baths.

We leave on Thursday for a double header against Bendigo and AIS.  We have 1 more hard training session and then we will be ready to roll.
 
Just want to thank all the fire fans that turned on the weekend. You guys are the best Wnbl fans.

***************************

Hi All,
 
Last weekend saw the Townsville McCafe Fire score a big win against the Sydney Uni Flames 89-80.
This game and getting the win was very important for us as a group and for keeping our season and finals hopes alive. After a disappointing loss to the Flames the previous weekend, and a quick trunaround we needed to regroup, and make some adjustments at both ends of the floor. A goal for most of our games this season has been to try and put 40mins of solid, high energy basketball together, we have come close a few games but still we don't feel as though we have put a full game together. The Sydney game was a good example of that, we came out strong and attacking but we still had a lapse which let nearly a 20 point lead turn into a 3 point lead with three minutes to go in the game.
To the girls credit we hung in there and made some big plays at both ends of the court, to hold on to a much needed win! As a group we had 6 people in double figures which is a fantastic effort, if we continue to share the ball around and have that many contributors we will be a very hard team to guard.
 
We go into the Christmas break 10-4, which is pretty close to where we wanted to be at the start of the season, it is a good chance for some of the girls to get off the court, rest and get on top of any niggling injuries so we can come back fresh and hit the ground running when we take on Dandenong our first game back at home on the 9th January.
 
The Townsville McCafe Fire would like to take this chance to thank all our fantastic supporters and sponsors that make the effort to come out to all our games at New Projects Australia stadium. The vocal home town support is paramount to NPA stadium being such a graveyard for visiting teams.
 
Thats it for another great year, we would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy and safe New Year! We look forward to seeing you all again on 9th of January where we kick off the rest of our season and our run toward the finals!
 
Merry Christmas!
Aneka Davis

Another road trip, last one before Christmas. We had Logan in Brisbane on Friday night and Sydney in Sydney on Saturday night.  It was the first road trip that we had our whole team travelling (11 - Shatz and Roey's first road trip for the season). Unfortunately Amy was only available for one game due to her calf injury - with Sydney being the chosen one. We had the first game at Logan on the Friday night. It was being televised on ABC on Saturday therefore we were a bit delayed starting, not sure why though as they made the mistake of putting on the game that we played Logan on the 14th November on TV instead. Fixing it up around half time by the help of a few people calling in (my Dad included).

We came away with the win in the end after a up and down type of game. It was good to have Roey back, back to her scoring self. She also nearly took out the ABC commentators in warm up - lucky for Leah's quick reflexes. Leah also received a cut on her elbow requiring stitches as her insides were coming out according to Dr Amy and me as her assistant.

We then headed to Sydney the next morning for our first clash with the Flames for the season. We lost Joey that morning due to a planned holiday prior to joining the Fire (have a great time Jo, see you in the new year). Therefore we were back to 10 players with Amy retiring from her Assistant Coaching position deciding it's much better being on the court because it gets a bit smelly on the bench.

We put it up to the Flames for the majority of the game, although missed block outs, turnovers and limited players got the better of us and we went down by a larger margin than the game represented. Leah went down in the 2nd Quarter with a knee injury (unsure of the extent of damage but the size of the knee after the flight home didn't look good). We now have the opportunity to look at the areas that we lacked in the game and make a mends on Friday night the 18th December when we meet Sydney again in our last game before Santa comes.

We hope that lots of people can make it out to our last game for 2009. It will be a good match up and a great way to finish 2009 with a home win for our fans.

Signing out - Cherie

DRESS UP IN THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT AND YOU COULD WIN A PRIZE - whether it be Santa, his little elves or Mrs Claus - it's up to you.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM THE TOWNSVILLE McCAFE FIRE

With a hard fought win over Adelaide last Friday night we have moved back up into third place on the WNBL ladder this week.

 

In the first match up with  Adelaide this season it was bound to be a good game with both teams having injured players returning to their lineups in recent weeks. This week we had Rohanee and Bec Shatz back in uniforms and Leah returned for her first home game after sitting out for sometime.

 

Going into this matchup we knew we had to improve in our possession game and stop Adelaide from putting up a big score. At the quarter time break we were leading by four, but trailing in the rebound count by one.

We had a solid scoring effort in the remaining three quarters, 19 points on the board in each quarter, the lead stretched to double figures at a few points but the lightning didn’t go away and the final outcome was a win by 8.

 

The rebounding efforts were greatly improved from last week with 29 of our 55 boards being offensive and giving us second chances in offense. Aneka and Tanya showed that they were focused on the glass with 15 and 13 rebounds respectively.

 

We also celebrated some milestones with Cherie recognised for playing 150 WNBL games and Aneka reaching 1000 points! Congratulations girls!

 

This week we hit the road again, heading back to <st1:City w:st="on">Logan</st1:City> for our third matchup with the thunder, and then onto <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Sydney</st1:place></st1:City> where the Flames are waiting for the first of two games in as many weeks with them.

 

Last weekend the Townsville McCafe Fire hit the road for the second time this season, first to take on Bulleen Boomers Saturday, followed by Dandenong Ranger on Sunday or as Cagie thought they were the Dandenong Rangas.  Hard to figure where she got that from. :)

 

Unfortunately we took two huge steps back in our progress as a team. Both games were not very pretty to say the lest and have left us very disappointed at our performance.

 

The Bulleen game no doubt was very tough, but a challenge I think we could have risen to.  A challenge, I believe we will rise to in our home court!  

 

With a very slow start it put us in a bad spot from the beginning with a 3 to 20 score late in the first quarter. We tried to pull ourselves together and we slowly closed the gap down to 6 points. Yet it was too late for us and we were overwhelmed by the Boomers.

 

Amy Lewis, Cherie Smith, Rachael Flanagan, and Aneka Davis all were able to do a great job putting the ball in the hoop. However the lack of our defensive and possession game were our biggest hinders in this game.

 

Sunday our game against Dandenong started off similar to the night before.

 

In both games we let ourselves down on our possession game and our defensive pressure that have been our key strengths in beating teams with immense talent such as the Boomers.  Overall it is two games we are extremely disappointed to lose but what is done is done and what we need to do now is learn from this very disappointing weekend.   From this weekend we must move forward and get back on track to regain our position on the ladder.  This weeks practice is our chance to learn from were we went wrong and make sure we do learn the lesson so we don’t have to feel this way ever again.

 

Cos, let me tell you, what we are feeling is not nice!!

Battered and bruised - these are the great signs of a tough and challenging ball game. It is amazing though how a win can simply take all this pain away and last weekend’s win against Canberra did exactly that! So let’s do a quick recap on this great win.

Right from the start we knew how much this game meant. It wasn’t just about getting the split over the Caps; it was about making a point. A point that proves we have worked hard - day in and day out - to learn and improved our game.  By keeping this offensively driven team to less than 60 points we achieved, for the first time this season our Awesome Relentless Defensive Pressure goal which has since been abbreviated to ARDP – thanks to Rach.

 Secondly, with special mention to Tanya and Aneka who still managed to pull down 10 boards each respectively against the much taller bigs from Canberra, allowed us as a pack to smash the rebound count 45 to 23. This was clearly one of the decisive factors to the great win.

Points to work on this week at training are definitely: valuing the ball more = fewer turnovers and individually knowing and executing scouts!

The hard work is paying off but really it’s just the beginning, with our focus now clearly set on the double header road trip this weekend against Bulleen and Dandenong.  Two more tough and challenging games ahead – but that’s what we love about this sport.

That’s all from me guys!

Kirbs #6    

We are currently in good shape on the WNBL ladder sitting a close 2^nd behind Bulleen Boomers with 6 wins and only 1 loss. Our next month of basketball consists of some tough contests against quality teams such as Canberra, Bulleen, Dandenong, Adelaide and Sydney. On the weekend just gone we faced Logan away and managed to achieve our second win on the road this year.

The game against Logan started off with a bang as both team were in full flight offensively, finding it easy to score. At the end of the first quarter we were on track for a 100pt ball game, but the problem clearly was with our defence. Logan was scoring too quickly and easily against our defensive pressure, and we knew we had to do a better job to lock it down. After a stern half time “talk” with Bucks, we knew what we had to do to win the game. Our defence picked up and only 19pts for the entire second half were scored on us as we managed to draw away from them offensively. On paper it was a successful 21pt win (77-56), but a lot of learning points came out of the match. We have a lot of hard work ahead of us before our next game this weekend against Canberra.  

There is a lot at steak this weekend. We have both won one and lost one the last 2 times we’ve met. The game will decide who gets the split. We need to get this game girls!!

Shenanigan of the week:

-         On the to our hotel from the airport, Bairstow was booked for doing 86km in a 70 zone by the Federal Police.. Bucks (in convoy following Bear in the second van) almost received a fine by revealing to the police that he was also doing 80km in the 80 zone! (1 in all in with our team!!) Turns out this mystical “70 zone” was in fact an 80 zone and we were in the clear… We only found this out on the way back to the airport when we looked at the signs. We were jibbed. We decided the federal police should go catch some real crims!! Banana smugglers or something!

 

Hi all,

Well as you all probably know we hit the road for the first time on the weekend down to Canberra to encounter the Capitals on Friday followed by the AIS on Saturday. We collected our first loss of the season against the Caps but we were able to learn alot out of the game after being in the contest for the first 3 quarters. It was an extremely fast paced physical game and very defensively focused for the first half with the score line only being 32-30 at the half time break. After the break however it was a very different story with both teams finding it easier to create scoring opportunities and put the ball in the basket. Down by 1 going in to the final term its a quarter we would like to forget, allowing Canberra to score 32 points and ultimately going down by 20 points, 89-69 - YUCK!

No time to feel sorry for ourselves, we had to bounce back against the AIS on Saturday and ensure we played defence for 40 minutes and make smarter decisions on offence. After a slow start we won the game comfortably 85-52 and in doing so were able to rotate everyone through the game with Naomi Cage tasting her first minutes of WNBL basketball. Getting herself on the stat sheet with 1 steal, 1 turnover and 2 points, congrats Naomi!

I think we learnt 4 main things from the road trip to Canberra

1.  Reward for effort - 30% shooting against the Caps

2.  Tanya Smith gave a rebounding lesson to Canberra - 21 boards (16 offensive)

3.  Dont let Tolo get a triple double with points (21), rebound (10) and 13 BLOCKS!!!

4.  Harry Connick Jnr. and Robert Downey Jnr. are not related - Thanks Kirby!!!

We're back on the road this weekend to play Logan on Saturday afternoon. After beating them comfortably a few weeks ago we know they will want a bit of revenge on their home court, but with a chance to close out the series over them I know the girls will be looking to do so after letting it slip against Canberra last weekend.

I hope you all tune in as it is a live ABC game on Saturday and looking forward to coming back to Townsville with another win under our belts.

After a great win against Canberra and a bye last weekend the girls were primed for a big game against Perth on Friday night and didn't disappoint with a 97 to 81 win at NPA stadium. Although we all it was a less than impressive effort at the defensive end of the floor to score 97 points in this league was a great effort especially with Rohanee still out injured and without the services of our import Leah Rush for the game. Leah injured her knee at training last week but, hopefully will be able to play against Logan this Saturday. 

 

With our big names like Roey and Leah out with injury you would think that the 'Basketball Gods' would let us sail through the majority of the rest of the season relatively injury free! But NO, just 4 weeks into the season our physio Cat Lansky is under the pump treating almost everyone at least once but usually twice a week. One junior player in particular who will remain nameless, has become a magnet for injury; after breaking her leg during the ABA season, she also broke her little finger during the Fire pre-season and then injured her shoulder trying to get through a screen at training 3 weeks ago. Thinking that was it (bad things usually come in threes) at gym during the week she tripped over a step giving herself an impressive corked thigh and the rest of us a great abs work out form all the laughing! I was thinking if basketball doesn't work out for her she could make some money writing a book, maybe something like: "The Idiots Guide on How Not To Injure Yourself!"

 

Back on track, our upcoming game against Logan will be one not to miss! Logan are sitting 5th on the WNBL ladder with a record of 3 wins and 2 losses, only going down in their 2 losses by a combination of 4 points; Canberra by 3 a few weeks ago and then lost a heartbreaker to Bendigo a week later on the buzzer by 1 point. If our defence is switched on for 40 minutes this Saturday night we will go a long way to securing the win and keeping our unbeaten record at home to 15 straight games. Hope to see you all there.

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