I have BEEN waiting a long time for this message. And honestly, I was starting to doubt that it would ever come. And then, this cold Tuesday morning, it came—Chris Pike was asking ME to write for the WSBL column. Finally.

But now it’s Thursday and this thing isn’t gonna write itself, and if Chris is coming to me for help he’s obviously scraping the barrel for ideas himself. This whole thing kinda soured quickly. I’ll do my best to make lemonade.

Speaking of souring, I may as well begin by discussing our season so far down in the Ham. With finals looming, you are all no doubt losing sleep over the prospect of our three-peat. But, this isn’t going to be your typical feel good piece, no sirree. This is going to be a gritty, hard hitting, behind the scenes narrative of the life of a Flamer (that’s what we call ourselves, Flamers).

Honestly, despite being back to back champions, this year hasn’t been all photo shoots and autograph signings. They actually expect us to train twice a week still. I bet the men’s champions don’t have to train. Yes, we are living legends in Rocko, but it comes at a price: you actually have to be in Rocko, like a lot. I know what you’re thinking—beautiful, secluded beaches, ick. That’s just the tip of the ol’ iceberg, mate. So, if you think you can handle this expose on what it’s really like playing for Rockingham, no holds barred, have a read.

Let me start with the team. I wish I could tell you we all got along, but since no one likes Ariana Hetherington, I can’t. Thanks a lot, Ari. Last year’s banner made it two in a row for us at a time when the city was desperate for something, anything to raise if from the trenches of tiresome monotony. Rockingham was Cleveland and overnight we became the Cavaliers. For the sake of the analogy, I guess I’ll play LeBron. By any club's standards, two in a row would indicate success and steps in the right direction. But that’s not how we do things. In Rocko we like to say, “if it ain’t broke, break it” and so we threw out the baby with the bathwater and started over.

We recruited FOUR new players (all without my permission I might add) and introduced a new offence. Oh, and get this. One of the new recruits was this really athletic and talented WNBL American import that would no doubt expect to shoot the ball a lot. They had obviously underestimated my ego.

It was going to be an uphill battle. We even tried to bring Tucker back—we all know how she likes to run the show—but even she couldn’t be persuaded. Things were looking grim. Did they really expect us to win with so many new, talented faces? Not to mention the learning…all the listening and learning essential to implementing a new offence. We were just girls, after all. It would take a really arrogant coach to think they could pull this off. Oh wait, that’s right. Check.

Still, it wasn’t going to be easy. Winning two championships had really inflated some of these girl's egos. And if two wasn’t enough, Darcee had won a third championship for some obscure team in some remote place that no one is interested in, so she has been a real nightmare. It was setting up to a real fiasco and just when I thought we had no shot of a three-peat, something amazing happened. The stars aligned and four girls basically skipped town. Darcee went to Europe for eight weeks, Tarsha went to America for five weeks, Jacinta moved home to Kalgoorlie and Ify was remaining in Spain until her calf injury healed. It was as if the basketball gods had answered all our prayers.

Suddenly, we didn’t have too much talent at all and we certainly didn’t need to learn anything while they were all away. All that we needed to do now that we had gotten rid of the riff-raff was win games. Call me crazy, but I couldn’t help but feel like my dreams of a three-peat were still alive.

It has been a long season for the Flamers. We’ve had players in and out, coaches gallivanting off to Kilsyth for some 'nationals tournament, and unfortunately we’ve had to rely on Ari, the girl no one likes, way too much.

But, with four games left, our blueprint seems to be working, as we’ve put ourselves in an impossible position to finish first. You can’t really argue results like that. But just when you thought you had us figured out, for whatever reason, everyone has made sure to be in the country for finals, so it looks like our fate may still be in our hands.

I suppose too, whether or not our coach becomes the David Blatt or Ty Lue of this story remains in our hands as well. And I think every sports fan can appreciate a script like that.