Hope travel bug doesn’t lay Firebirds low

I HAD my first trip to New Zealand with the Queensland Firebirds over the weekend and it was a great trip that was capped with a win over the Northern Mystics.

The girls went away to Wellington in Round 2 but Sunday’s game in Auckland was my first with the team outside of Australia and it was really fun to travel with the girls.

All the team is really close so it was great to travel with my friends and we were lucky enough to stay at Sky City in Auckland, which is one of the nicest hotels in the city.

My best friend lives in New Zealand and I only really get to see her around every six months so it was great to be able to catch up with her while I was over there too.

The fans in Auckland were very different to the ones in Australia, they are really close to the court and are really in to the game.

They were cheering their Mystics and booing us loudly but our team has been backing each other and believing in each other all year and we came away with a great result.

To see Mystics shooter Maria Tutaia play up close was really cool, I had only ever see her play on TV before and she is just an awesome player and a shooter I really look up to.

It was a particularly special victory for me because my aunty Leah passed away recently and her funeral was in Townsville on Friday so my teammates and I dedicated the win to her memory. Having a road trip to another country was a great experience, we flew in on Saturday and had a light training run on Sunday morning before the game later on Sunday, and then we were up at 3.30am Australian time yesterday to get back to Brisbane.

Our hectic travel schedule will continue this week when we make the long trip to West Australia to take on the undefeated West Coast Fever – 20 hours of travel in a week.