Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to congratulate the Townsville Fire Women's NBL team on what was a remarkable season. The Townsville Fire actually folded last year and the efforts of local businesspeople, including a steering committee comprising Townsville Enterprise chair, David Kippin, local podiatrist Jane Arlett, and Michelle Morton from wilson/ryan/grose, along with many other people, got this team off the ground.

The first thing they did was to get a new coach and from that they got people to stay. Key to that was keeping Rachael Flanagan, our captain, the heart and soul of the team and current Opal. From there we built a team. We were short on height but we had a wonderful feeling about the side. When we entered this NBL season the ABC refused to come to Townsville to broadcast a game live. We were only expected to hang around. The local basketball fraternity as well as the corporate world got involved and packed Murray stadium regularly to watch these girls go around. We recently had the trophy presentation night after making the semifinals and beating the Sydney Uni Flames in the first semifinal before going down to Dandenong in the preliminary final.

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