Inside 'insane' final moments of WNBL's greatest finals game

• MVP Courtney Woods reveals Townsville Fire's clutch secret
• Championship hero Miela Sowah's run to a WNBL ring
• How Alicia Froling felt 'seen' by Shannon Seebohm
• Record finals crowds cap-off groundbreaking WNBL season

Townsville Fire coach Shannon Seebohm has taken fans inside the "insane" final moments of one of the greatest WNBL grand final games of all-time which saw his team come up with several iconic plays to beat the Perth Lynx in overtime and claim the club's second title in the past three years.

Game two of this year's WNBL championship series at the sold-out Perth High Performance Centre saw a total of 41 lead changes before the series seemed destined to return to Townsville for a deciding game three.

Enter the fairytale story of two of the Fire's new additions for the 2025-26 season in injury replacement forward Chantel Horvat, who grabbed an offensive rebound over the best rebounder in the competition in Anneli Maley and found her teammate in former Lynx guard Miela Sowah for a game-tying three-pointer.

The play was emblematic of Chris Bosh's famous offensive rebound and dish to Ray Allen, who made a three to save the Miami Heat from elimination in the 2013 NBA Finals.

From there, Townsville still felt like underdogs going into overtime with Finals MVP Courtney Woods and Alex Fowler fouled out, but they made the big plays when it mattered and survived a last-ditch effort from Perth's Alex Ciabattoni to take home the club's fifth ever championship.

The ebbs and flows of one of the greatest WNBL games in history then saw an outpour of emotion from Seebohm - usually one of the more calm coaches in the league.

"It was insane... There would have been five plays in the fourth quarter where I was like 'ohh, we're going to game three, we're done here'," Seebohm said on the latest edition of the Cut to the Jase podcast with Jason Cadee.

"Then all of a sudden they'd call a timeout, we'd run a play, we'd score, then they'd come down and score, and then we'd get a big stop or they'd miss and Perth would miss a wide open three... then Miela obviously hit that big shot and we thought we were done.

"Han Xu makes two free throws, we actually went into that last time out and we drew up a play and we have a bunch of different plays obviously ,and I said to my assistants, do I run this one or do I run one of the couple plays we've got to attack when we know teams are going to switch everything.

"We're like, no no, Hans's out there, so we'll go with this one and then we walk out on the floor, I didn't realise they'd subbed her out, so we walk out on the floor, they'd gone small, so they're going to switch and I almost called my last time out straight away to bring them back in and draw the switch play.

"Then I don't know why I was like, negative thinking, but if we don't score I may want this to advance it after we have to foul again or whatever. So I was like I'll keep it, we'll see what happens and luckily Miela hits the three and we kind of come back in and we had to get a couple stops. Well, we had to get one stop to go to overtime and they go to Han, she misses... I'm like we survived another one there.

"It was real cool, obviously we hit that big shot and then we came into overtime and had a minute or whatever, two minutes before we start OT and I came in and I said to the girls, I was like I was like 'this is fun', I said how fun is this and they're looking at me like I'm an idiot.

"But I'm like this is just unreal, this game's been amazing and I was like 'let's just go and play Townsville Fire basketball and finish this thing'.

"We come out, Han Xu gets her fifth foul, we already had Woody and Fowler fouled out, so both teams are trying to figure out what they're doing... It was like we'd make a big play, they'd make a big play, we'd make a big play, they'd make a big play, we'd get up five and I'm like 'OK we've got momentum' and then they'd come down and score twice.

"It was just one of those games, mate, could have went either way. It looked like a bunch of times Perth were going to beat us, looked like a few times we were going to beat them and big players just made big plays and then Miela made a big play off the baseline out of bounds got a layup and that put us up one and then Lucy Olsen got that big steal and got fouled and then knocked down her free throws.

"Even right down the end, Chibba's last shot, I was convinced, I was 'this is going in' and I started to get angry in my head I was like 'far out how do we let her get that far down the floor' then it rimmed out.

"It was just amazing, craziest game I think I've ever been a part of, haven't really seen a grand final in the WNBL play out that way, one for the history books."

After the outpour of emotion following the final buzzer, Seebohm said his feelings after the game wasn't anything to do with him but it was about how special his group was.

"It wasn't really to do with me to be honest, it was it's just my team," he said.

"We've obviously had some really good teams here and I've been very fortunate to coach some very very good players and things over the years but there was just something special this year.

"We obviously put this team together two years ago, 18 months ago, whatever it was and we had a we lost to the (Bendigo) Spirit in the grand final last year and brought a lot of those girls back again and added some really important pieces like Miela Sowah, Chantel Horvat, Lucy Olsen, but just you know through our whole roster like everyone was just so locked in.

"I know we were just joking before we got online but we had five girls go to the gym and lift yesterday (four days after game two), so like you know they were just so they wanted it so much ,the camaraderie in the team was something I haven't really seen before.

"There's a lot of pressure in pro sport and that but we just had so much fun this year... every day was just enjoyable to go to practice and I think that's where that (emotion) came from is just having worked with these guys going through what we went through last year... and just everything we went through (this season) and we had some injuries, we had some bad losses, we had some ups and downs in that middle patch of the season and we figured it out.

"It was just a season that I think I'll remember forever and I'm very grateful to coach such a great group of people."