The tension was palpable as the Fusion Heat and Fusion Fire sides faced off against one another on Saturday.
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The much anticipated round 7 clash pitted the top two teams in the competition against one another, with both sides having remained unbeaten and collected a total of 18 competition points through the first six rounds of the current Rawson Homes A grade premiership season.
The Heat entered the season as defending champions, and despite a scare against the Nygnan Cougars, have so far been ahead of the pack in their pursuit of a third successive premiership.
Fusion Fire came into the showdown as the underdog and walked away with their first loss of the season after the Heat established a lead early and then built on it throughout the game.
"It started off quite well, but the Heat defence is very dominant, particularly with Britt Hill, they shut our shooters down quite a lot," Fire manager Rebecca May said.
The first quarter of the game wrapped up with only a three goal difference between the two competitors, but the Heat were able to extend that lead in the next few stanzas, widening the gap until the Fire were facing a 34 - 14 loss at full-time.
"It was a good game and played in good spirit, they converted their goals and won," May said.
"It was all very good, we've had some good games against other teams in the comp, but they've always been that step above, so we just took it as another game to see how we'd go, we were interested to see how they'd go without their dominant shooter and they still did very well."
The Fire were also dogged by some absences going into the match-up missing out on a few key players due to injuries
"Everywhere else was pretty evenly matched, though we're coming off a few injures, so one of our main centre court players has a broken foot, two of our main shooters are also waiting on physio clearances."
Fusion Fire will next play against the Inspire Rebels at home, while Fusion Heat will face off against the Narromine Hawks away, both of those games will take place in round 8 on Saturday June 29