Image credit: Michael Farnell (Sports Imagery)
The Cockburn Cougars and Warwick Senators have taken decidedly different paths to the NBL1 West Women's Grand Final but there is every reason to expect a tremendous contest to decide the championship.
For the second straight season, the NBL1 West Grand Finals will be held at RAC Arena and the women's contest in 2025 featurs the undefeated Cougars against a Senators team who finished the regular season in second position.
Both teams have won recent championships too with Warwick winning back in 2022 and Cockburn in 2023, and the Grand Final for 2025 will tip-off on Saturday at 4:30pm.
BURTON PROUD OF SENATORS' GRIT TO BATTLE THROUGH
NO NEED FOR ADDED MOTIVATION FOR UNBEATEN COUGARS
NO PRESSURE FOR ROBBINS, SENATORS IN GRAND FINAL
PORTER ENTRENCHED IN COCKBURN COMMUNITY
The Cougars are playing in a third straight NBL1 West Grand Final having won a championship in 2023 in what was their first ever decider in the women's competition before they also made it last year only to be overrun in the finish by the Rockingham Flames at RAC Arena.
Now in 2025, Cockburn have looked invincible winning all 20 matches of the regular season before going on to win a two-point thriller over the Flames in the qualifying final and then hammering the shorthanded Perry Lakes Hawks by 27 points in the preliminary final.
The Senators were sitting in second position throughout most of the regular season and did end up finishing there, but in the absence of back court trio Emma Gandini, Chloe Forster and Robbi Ryan, they were up against it heading into the finals.
Forster did try returning in the qualifying final but injured her right ankle having returning after injury to her left, but still Warwick managed to secure the four-point victory and then backed it up with the nine-point victory against the Mandurah Magic.
Both those finals wins were at Warwick Stadium with the Senators now in their first Grand Final since 2022 when not only did they win the NBL1 West championship, but backed up a week later winning the NBL1 National Finals.
It has been a remarkable season for the Cougars in 2025 winning all 22 matches heading into the Grand Final by scoring an average of 98.0 points a game with an average winning margin of 31.6 points.
Only twice during the regular season did they win by single-figure margins and one of those was against the Senators back on May 16 at Warwick Stadium where they toughed out the six-point victory.
The Cougars are only the third team to go through a women's SBL/NBL1 West season undefeated on the back of the 1999 Willetton Tigers and 2000 Perry Lakes Hawks achieving the same feat.
That doesn’t necessarily give much insight into what is in store for them on Saturday with the Tigers team of 1999 going on to win the championship but the Hawks of 2000 lost the Grand Final to the Perth Redbacks.
The NBL1 South also provides mixed insights for the Cougars with Geelong United having gone through the entire women's season this year unbeaten but then losing in the Grand Final last Saturday night against the Knox Raiders.
However, the Cougars do deserve to be feeling good heading into the Grand Final given how dominant they have been over the 22 games so far, and how everything has gone virtually perfectly to plan for coach Russell Hann.
It's the high quality talent who have all been willing to sacrifice for the good of the team that has made Cockburn so good with Sarah Mortensen ending up named to the All-First Team and Steph Gorman to the All-Second Team.
Gorman was also named Best Defensive Player for a second time in three years since joining the Cougars while they are well led by point guard Jewel Williams and centre Jessie Edwards, and with Daniel Raber fresh off a WNBL season at Geelong.
Ruby Porter is the fresh addition for 2025 and has been terrific in her first NBL1 West season having been at the Darwin Salties the last three years.
Cockburn coach Russell Hann has stepped up to replace Tyrone Thwaites in 2025 to do a terrific job and be named Coach of the Year, and he is just keeping the Cougars focused on the job at hand for Saturday.
"A few things we've spoken about as a group is that one of the benefits we have is that we've all been there," Hann said.
"This group has been together for a while now and we've experienced the high of that week and the low of it over the past two years so we know what both feel like. We've also played at RAC before so we know what that feels like as well.
"All the other stuff is just the outside noise that we don’t need to worry about whether it's being undefeated or whatever it is.
"We don't focus on any of those things because we are a week by week team, and we really do focus on the job ahead. And the girls do a great job of that so we'll just focus in on the game and see what happens."
At no point all season have Warwick been able to get their full team out on the court, but they still were able to put together an impressive 15-5 record and lock away second position despite that.
The closest to full strength the Senators have been was a three-game stretch at the end of June/start of July where both Robbi Ryan and Emma Gandini were on board with Stacey Barr, Chloe Forster and Kyana Weir in the back court.
They scored three wins over the Eastern Suns, Rockingham and Willetton by an average of 43.3 points but in that last game of that stretch against the Tigers, Forster and Ryan both got injured.
Ryan is yet to play since and Forster did attempt a return from a left ankle injury in the qualifying final only to injure her right ankle attempting to do so.
Gandini has now missed the last three games as well while Perth Lynx WNBL forward Kiara Waite was only able to return in the preliminary final win against Mandurah.
Despite all that, the Senators still have 249-game, four-time championship winning Olympian Nat Burton along with Geelong Venom WNBL signing Mackenzie Clinch Hoycard, and captain and two-time MVP Stacey Barr.
Who else is able to get out there for the Grand Final remains to be seen, but Brad Robbins was Coach of the Year in 2024, is no stranger to RAC Arena from his own NBL Perth Wildcats playing career, and is feeling no pressure whatsoever.
"They're undefeated, they're 22-0 and I assume people don’t expect us to win, and I assume we're the underdog and everything," Robbins said.
"We have zero pressure, they are 22-0 so my messaging all week to these girls is to enjoy the experience.
"Some of them might never experience it again and I will tell them to enjoy this experience for what it is, and then to come out and play the way that we have played and believe in that.
"We've been in games we shouldn’t be, we've won games we shouldn’t have and going in with that mentality means the result will take care of itself but as a coach I don’t feel any pressure at all.
"I know the rest of the coaching staff and the players don’t either, we're just coming in thinking we have nothing to lose and we're in a great position coming into it."