NSW title in the net

Capt Dee-Ann Jackson pushes past a Navy player in the Women’s final of the NSW Interservice Basketball. Photo by Bill Cunneen, Army newspaper

By Pte Shannon Joyce

A RIP-snorting performance by the NSW Army men’s side saw Navy go down by 30 points in the inter-service basketball final at Randwick Barracks last month.

Unfortunately, the 94-64 defeat of the Navy men compelled their women’s team members to return the favour, defeating their Army counterparts by one point in a 56-55 win.

Air Force were left out in the cold, with the men’s side defeated by Army 87-70 early in the competition, and the women’s side contesting Army with a mixed-service team.

In the men’s final, Navy remained competitive for the first quarter, both sides staying almost neck-and-neck, with Army running out to a slight lead.

But the second quarter saw Navy blown out of the water–their legs fatiguing and their grip on the game loosening by a 20-point deficit.

Lt Ross Kinsella said Army had been lucky to have a couple of days off, and that the Navy players had to work pretty hard to get into the final to begin with.

“They’d played the Raafies this morning, so we knew they’d be pretty sore coming into the game,” he said.

Plenty of subs in the final quarter gave some court-time to a lot of the players who hadn’t spent much time on the court.

Lt Kinsella said that his teammates had been hungry to win it this year.

“We won last year, so we were pretty keen to go back-to-back,” he said.

In the women’s final, Army were down by 20 points by the end of the first half.

Capt Dee-Ann Jackson from the Army women’s side said Navy had played a strong game in the first and second quarter of the finals, but Army almost took it back.

“Army didn’t really come together as a team until the fourth-quarter,” she said.

“We played a bit better than the Navy in the fourth, but let it go for too long, and as the results showed, we lost by one point.”