Bassett sought a little magic in move to Lightning

WHEN Caitlin Bassett headed across Australia to join the Sunshine Coast Lightning netball team, she secretly wanted to pull a rabbit from a hat.

And she wasn’t talking figuratively either – her cunning plan featured a real rabbit and the hat which surely would have had to be part of her act.

The colourful Australian netball captain reveals she fleetingly contemplated getting a magician’s licence to get her cherished pet rabbits from Perth, where they can be kept as pets, into Queensland, where they are banned unless you can prove you are a magician and they are part of your act.

The plan was aborted but the attachment lingers.

“I miss them and I still visit them when I go back. I gave them to a netball nerd family in Perth,” said Bassett, who is studying broadcast journalism and often starts her match- day Saturdays by hosting a breakfast show on radio Hot 91.1.

“After I talked to the Sunshine Coast I thought I would never come here because I could not take the rabbits with me. It was a serious concern for me, that’s for sure.

“Then I thought: ‘ Do I want to win a premiership?’ Actually, that is probably more important to me in life. “But it was a tough decision.” Bassett was Perth- based for her entire career before joining the Lightning prior to their premiership- winning debut season last year.

The Lightning have followed up with another strong winter, which will see them face the Queensland Firebirds in Sunday’s Super Netball knockout semi- final – sweet vindication for Bassett’s decision to leave her home, and rabbits, behind.

“I genuinely did look up how to be a magician,” she said.

“What a great story it would have been and I thought it would be a great way to bring the bunnies with me. “I would do anything for them. “They lived in my house and had the run of the house.

“They would eat cords behind my television and I would take them out for coffee with me.

“But to bring them here there was a lot of rules. You have to provide documentation as how you would keep them. You had to give them your address so they could check you are doing everything right.

“There was a lot of paperwork and I did not know whether they would have survived the flight.”