18/03/08 What on earth is happening down in the Valleys? After another tantalising season at the top of Women's Division One, and with only one more week of the season remaining, last weekend's title decider, between Rhondda Rebels and Sheffield Hatters, was postponed at the last minute. It's difficult to see there being a chance to fit in a rearrangement before the end of the regular season, and if that's the case, then the title is already in the Hatters' hands. I'm sure that they will be as disappointed as everyone else if the end of the league campaign comes as such an anti-climax! The postponement, according to the Rhondda website, was caused as a result of a double-booking by the Rhondda Fach Sports Centre, as "a DOG show was booked all day on Sunday". That, though, appears to be only the tip of a huge iceberg of problems that have beset the Cup holders in recent weeks. Apparently in pole position in the title race, with only one defeat all season (albeit to the Hatters, in the reverse fixture, in Sheffield), Rhondda suffered a shock defeat ten days ago, going down by fourteen points at Northumbria - a team they'd beaten by a convincing 28 points just two months previously. The impact of that defeat became even greater when it was revealed that player/coach Andrea Congreaves and Captain Sally Kaznica had left the club, described on their website as being "in a cloud of controversy." The departure of two such experienced, and professional, players inevitably set the rumour mill working overtime, but left even more questions unanswered. In the short term, could the Rebels, who still have a team of outstanding players, pull things together again, to win their fifth league title this century? The farce over the postponement of the Sheffield game suggests that the answer to that is "no", but what of the medium and long-term? What were the "controversial circumstances" surrounding the departure of Congreaves and Kasnica? The knee-jerk conclusion (as in most basketball matters) would be to guess that money has some part to play. But would that really lead two such respected players to not only quit the team, but to pack up all their possessions and leave completely? And if those two were so fed up, how do the remaining players feel? With the league title now seeming unlikely, and clearly a significant amount of unrest going on in the background, are there any further unpleasant shocks in store? We're so used to the Women's Championship Final pairing the Hatters with the Rebels (seven times in a row!), that any other Final would come as a huge shock. If Rhondda were to fail to reach the play-off semi-finals it would be an even greater shock .... .... and I'm not even going to speculate about some of the more extreme scenarios. Women's basketball has seen a considerable renaissance this season, with more teams involved in real competition for league positions. It would be a catastrophe if all that were to be devalued by a late-season implosion of the most successful women's team this century (12 trophies, to Hatters' 10, since 2001).
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