Last weekend saw the Yaralla Port City Power Men’s and Women’s teams hit the road once again with games down in Brisbane versus Northside and Logan. This has been our hardest stretch of the season with both teams driving 3600km and playing four games in nine days.

The Men’s team failed to prepare themselves mentally for the first game versus Northside and went down by 22 points to a team we were very capable of beating. Michael Kingma did a terrific defensive job on 2008 NBL Most Improved Player Cameron Tragardh in the first half but the rest of the team failed to follow his example and made too many defensive errors, allowing Northside easy baskets.

The Yaralla Port City Power women however came to the game meaning business. US import Celeste Stevenson dominated for the Power with 30 points and 24 rebounds, leading the women to their second victory of the season by 7 points. Northside threw everything at the Power team in the third quarter, cutting the Powers 10 point lead to a 1 point deficit but on the back of some tenacious defence by Shay Thetford, strong rebounding by Carla Pirie and Amanda Beatson and the sweet shooting of Celeste Stevenson, Nicole Just and Paige Wharton the girls were once again able to pull away to a sizable lead to seal the victory.

The following day saw us travel to Logan to take on the Thunder. With the Logan Thunder women’s team joining the WNBL next year this was always going to be a big ask for the Power. To their credit the girls took it to Logan’s star studded line up early, but in the fourth quarter Logan’s superior size took its toll and they handed the girls a 35 point loss. But an even bigger loss for the girls was Carla Pirie going down in the third quarter with a serious ankle injury which could possibly see her out for the rest of the season.

The Men’s team looking to make amends for a disappointing performance the night before came out hard, leaving nothing on the floor. Although we lost by 7 points it was one of best defensive efforts of the season with Dale Iwanicki especially doing a great job holding high scoring import Thalo Green in check all game. Offensively we ran very well, getting a lot of easy baskets inside against the Logan pressure with myself and Dale Iwanicki scoring 42 and 19 points respectively. Similar to the women’s team the biggest disappointment came in the form of a season ending injury to Glen Chapman who tore his Achilles tendon with 5 minutes left in the game. Glen has been plagued with bad luck this season with him also suffering a broken hand in a preseason game. Up until he suffered his injury Glen had finally recaptured the form he had shown in the pre season, and was having a great game both scoring and assisting in some important baskets.

This week both teams look forward to finally returning home to the Broome Room to take on Ipswich on Sunday afternoon. There has been quite a bit spoken about this game since by Ipswich since the start of the season for the Men and I know the boys have had this game marked in the calendar for quite a while. So look for a fiery encounter which should see the Power boys come out on top.