I think most people are genuinely hoping Perth win as the club and its fans are quite popular nationwide.

Well, It'd be more enjoyable seeing Perth lose a game 3 at home than a game 1....

Humorous start, yes well I certainly didn't shed a tear when United lost either, I just wanted a great contest and luckily Warrick came to the party.

Tonight I hope Dollar Beal can turn it on, no matter who wins it I think his match up with Lisch will be worth while...

I think the Hawks will be up against it, but hopefully being at full strength gives them a good start and they run with it.

Should be a great game, both teams have great starting 5s.
Perth looks deeper on paper but not sure that will be a big help in a finals game.
If Penney and Lisch fire the Hawks will get this one. Plus I think the Hawks have better coaching.

Hawks by 5pts.

Lisch and Penny don't worry me, it's old man Foreman that does. We always seem to forget he can shoot 3s.

Cats by 12, Jawai with 20 and 10...he's due

Thanks anon.

Break a leg Rob.

Cats $1.35
Hawks $3.20
Margin: -6.5 points
Over/Under: 172.5

Not 100% confident at all, they have some serious shooters and we don't. If they get going we could be in trouble.

I think they key for Hawks is accuracy from long range, if they shoot well they are in for a good chance.

If they don't Perth is too big, and Ogilvy is great but not a strong big man and gets out rebounded.

Some exciting match ups Lisch/Martin, Beal/Lisch, Prather/Penney.

The cats have generally bulldozed there way to a win, their perimeter defence has been good against the Hawks all year, albeit Penney didn't play last game...4-0 for the season.

Go Cats lets get this one done!

We will annihilate them!

Fingers crossed for the Hawks. Would really enjoy that results for so many reasons.

Hoping the Hawks do it

Very small crowd tonight, as usual for cats home semi finals

Foul fest

Wow Jawai..how do you do that?

Hawks should foul Jawai..cant shoot FTs to save himself.

Series over?

Hawks series gone now :(

Dirty play by Wagstaff to end Lisch's series..disgraceful.

How was that Wagstaff fault noddy ?


Trev is outta line there, what would he want if it was one of our players down, he'd want the game stopped.

Hope everyone took the under on that 172.5!

Hahaha jeez! Did not think people would actually bite that one ;)

Clearly satire.

End of 1st quarter. I got the feeling the Hawks might win this one, they are controlling tempo with their defence and the Wildcats after 6 quick points behind Beal only managed another 9 for the quarter. They are struggling vs a zone that collapses when the ball goes to the low post or is dribble penetrated.

15 fouls in the first period....wow

overreffing much?

Cats look better with Knight as opposed to Jawai.

The concern is having Jawai defend those on ball screens because he gets murdered off it quite a bit.

When's the last game Forman didn't get 2 fouls in the first quarter?

He lasted 2:36 tonight, and had 2 fouls in 3 seconds.

Hopefully Lisch is back for game 2, if not tonight.

White is a great fit for the Hawks team.

lol... Another 1:30 and Forman gets another foul.

FOREMAN DUNK SIGHTING.

Lisch injured?

Rolled his ankle stepping on Wagstaff's foot.

The Hawks have been competitive in the first half and will need to keep it tight to get the win

Well that was an awkward cut to break.

Gee I hope the Hawks get more points than Perth by the end of this one. That way they have a great chance of winning the game

11 boards in the first half for the cats according to the video screen here.
Clearly we need to recruit some size next season.

Lisch in a moonboot and crutches. He's done for the series you'd think and so are the Hawks.

Well, we'll see. Moonboot might just be to keep it iced. Looked like an ankle roll to me, which hurt like hell but can either be a day or a week out of action.

Oh Casey....

Penney needs to reel it in a bit here.

Does Gleeson ever not complain? Refs get baited into make up calls because he acts so victimised.

Perth simply too good. Its that simple.

Gleeson deserves about 10 techs each game.

All coaches complain, they just do it in different ways Gleeson is way too animated, where as Beveridge does it quietly.

Gleeson screams in their faces and comes on the verge of making contact. Any other ref does that, it's a tech, but he gets away with it because he does it all game.

Any other coach*

Ever watched Joey Wright when he gets going ?

That extra pass Ellis just made to Coenraad in the corner is the type of play Ellis wasn't making last year (or the first third of this season).

This has to be Redhage last year, gone 1 year too long.

NZ are better than both these teams

Robbins always seems to side with the away team on those 50/50 calls... I wonder if he's trying to go out of his way to not sound like a homer.

Doesn't look like a particularly great crowd.

ROFLcopter, as a NZ fan don't think we can beat Perth if we make the GF. Can't see us winning 2 at PA. Perth are a class enough team as it is but if refs call the game like they have tonight in a NZ-Perth series we will get wiped off the floor because that slow, stop start style doesn't suit us and we get ourselves into trouble when we have foul trouble.

Is everyone excited for a Perth-NZ finals?!?

Not even sure I'd watch a single game. Melbourne-Hawks probably would've been best case as far as entertainment goes, but doesn't look like either team is a good chance to make it now.

Shame about Lisch

Cats impressive on the defensive end but will need to execute better offensively if they're to beat a full strength opposition, whether we're talking about any of the other top 4 sides

Unlucky for Lisch and the Hawks.
If they were ever going to win in Perth, this was it.
Prather & Wagstaff in foul trouble early, Jawai still "sore," reversing the rebound trend, and that early poor shooting...
I don't see that happening again.

At the risk of stating the obvious, if they don't get Lisch back, this could be over in 2.

Hard to tell from the tv, but it didn't look exceptionally bad. They put him in a boot, but I didn't see a lot of ice, and he wasn't rushed straight off for treatment.
But a day and a half to recover from a game-ending injury???

End of 1st quarter. I got the feeling the Hawks might win this one, they are controlling tempo with their defence

What a bust Jawai is.

This has to be Redhage last year, gone 1 year too long.

Bit of a hollow win without Lisch participating, but what can you do.
Fingers crossed for a miracle recovery, but the way he was reacting to the doc I'm guessing it was a fairly bad one.

Casey, please stay out of foul trouble from now on. We reeeeeeeally need out out there.

Shout outs to Jervis for 18 extremely efficient minutes, and Hire, who didn't hit his shots tonight but continued the valuable role he has been playing in recent weeks.

Price of tickets for tonight's game unfortunately kept the crowd glued to their TV's at home.

I am a member, never missed a home game, but it was double the cost for the game $100 and still $55 in the bleachers.

So I thought a 6 pack and a bag of chips on my couch would do me just fine.....

I'm not saying that the game the players aren't worth the cost....I simply cannot afford to pay that much money for a ball game.

Perth is not rolling in the money anymore with the commodity prices down....

Members tickets weren't that bad, they didn't raise the prices (finals top up) silver members were 55

Members tickets weren't that bad, they didn't raise the prices (finals top up) silver members were 55

Finals games pricing was actually lower than last year, smallest crowd of the year.

Last year it was $65.
This year it was $55 (plus the $9.20 "delivery charge" plus a surcharge, so over $65.
If it goes to a 3rd game, that's $130, and if they make it to the GF, $260.
Plus parking, plus beverages, etc.

Most years, I wouldn't blink, but money's tight at the moment.

The app had Damo's block on AJ as a steal, the website has it as a block by Jawai.

Lisch going down has certainly dented Hawks hopes and its hard to see them doing anything other than scrap and hustle just to stay in the game. They did that last night but were always going to come up short.
Damian Martin kept Perth in it in the first half with his steals and I would give him player of the match.

Semi-finals are pretty much the smallest crowds of the year everywhere. Until the NBL gets high-level coverage in the mainstream media it will probably stay that way.

They really do need to look at ticket prices though. With limited time to promote the game you can't really afford to have people who are interested being turned away by the price.

One option would be to increase the league levy on GF ticket prices as there is always high demand for those, and drop it for SFs.

Dazz, i know things are tight now. We had only 4 people in our row of seats and 6 in the row behind us that's just 26 people less in 2 rows and there were a lot of areas that had no one in a row. I think the Wildcats would be disappointed with the numbers but not the noise the smaller crowd made.
I sit in silver ticket area so paid $121.30 for 2 seats including stupid 9.20 fee and $2.10 for credit card.
Let's hope IF we make it to the grand final at $130 a ticket it only goes to 2 games.