North and Forestville women have developed a strong rivalry in the Central ABL. In 2004, the Rockets defeated the Eagles in the Grand Final, and the Eagles reversed the result the following year. North started the 2007 season in better form, defeating West in double overtime, but lost a nail biter to Southern the following week, before recovering against Eastern. In contrast, Forestville went into this game winless, having dropped to Eastern in round 1 and a much improved South last week.

Forestville's desperation was evident early, especially that of Dee Ranford. Ranford who missed last week's lost to South, was hot early, scoring 8 of her team's first 10 points. Lizzie Wright hit a 15 foot jump shot to get North on the scoreboard, but Forestville was doing most of the scoring and when Naracoorte's Alex Duncan hit a 3 pointer on the quarter time buzzer, the score was 29-18.

Tania Dhu helped North reduce the gap with a trademark parabolic three pointer skilfully avoiding Hillcrest's retina-piercing lighting system, and also had a defensive impact, stopping Ranford for a brief period. Lauren Mansfield was momentarily dazed after an unsportsmanlike foul, but recovered to force a turnover in the backcourt, and the lead was reduced to four. Forestville responded with an Emma Pawlowski layup after an ice hockey assist from Emily Sims to Kylie Newbold, and regained an 8 point lead at half time.

Signs of a Rocket fightback were ominous when Kylie Newbold picked up her fourth foul 10 seconds into the third quarter, and Jess Fergus did the same two minutes later. Ranford and Dhu traded threes, but Forestville managed to maintain an 11 point lead at 3/4 time, surviving 8 minutes in the bonus.

A Mansfield three point play half way through the fourth quarter had the lead back to 7, but that was as close as it got. On three occasions that North ran a full court trap, Forestville handled it with quick passing and layups, and held on to win the game by 8.

29 points from Dee Ranford was a highlight and Kate Maplass' 20 points came at 57%. For the Rockets, Erin Lorenzini worked hard for her 23 points and Tania Dhu had 10 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists.

Kudos to Rocket statisticians Scott and Mark Wolstencroft, whose wireless wizardry allows court announcer David Durant immediate access to stats at High-Tech Hillcrest ^TM. Congratulations also to recent Grandpa David on his grandiloquence, which included use of the Caseyesque phrase "Numeric counterpart".