CITY of Birmingham captain Martyn Gayle looks ahead to Saturday’s trip to Essex Rebels as well as last week’s narrow defeat at home to Bradford. But there is also a reminder that there will be basketball at their Nechells base, with Rockets women at home to Liverpool – you can buy tickets for that game HERE.
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LAST Saturday against Bradford, I can’t pinpoint it in particular, but, we lost a little bit of fire – and they gained some.
The game just swung in their favour – and although we produced some fight in the final quarter, it wasn’t enough.
It meant that we’ve spoken about some things since and analysed them. We’ve also learned some things about each other that we perhaps didn’t know before, and we’ve taken that forward and making sure that we we implement that into our games now and come out with better results than we are, because we’re right there.
What we have is a problem in which we practice in a fashion that we include everyone, we share the ball, we trust in each other.
We know what we can do, but for some reason, we’re just not bringing that to games. So that indicates, to me, it’s a mindset thing.
🚀 Join us this International Women’s Day as our Rockets Women host Liverpool!
Coach Allen’s team have just two home games remaining this season – come and get behind the team as they look to finish the season on a high!
🎫 https://t.co/ffhW5cDy38#WeAreRockets #IWD2025 pic.twitter.com/hzj5fhbASM
— City of Birmingham Rockets (@cobrockets) March 6, 2025
It’s a preparation thing, but it stems from individual preparation and making sure that the mindset we have as players going into the game at the weekends remains the same as the way we train.
That’s a maturity thing, to keep the consistency from training to games.
The coach is doing a good job of finding out how he can help us and how he can develop us into better basketball players and better people.
Everything is just slowly, but surely, coming together. It’s just a shame that we’re not translating that into wins. But at some point they will, because we’re a good side, and we’re trying to learn the game the right way.
We’ve still got the play-offs in our sights. And that’s been our goal from the start of the season. We must make that target. If we don’t we’ve disappointed ourselves, the management and the fan base that follows us so passionately. So we owe it to ourselves to try and give it a good shot.
We played Essex early on in the season. We’re a different team to how we were then, and they are too. They’ve got some amazing players on their squad, but at the end of the day, we’re going to try and go there and get the win.
🚀 Bradford edge it.
Thank you for your fantastic support this evening! 👏
We are back at home in a couple of weeks time – tickets are available now…
🎫 https://t.co/asbFGMcCvC#WeAreRockets pic.twitter.com/nOPflMZoLO
— City of Birmingham Rockets (@cobrockets) March 1, 2025
We’re not going for anything less. We’re going to leave it all out on the floor. We’ve got our game plan. We know exactly how they play, we know what they like to do, their tendencies, and we’re going to try and disrupt that as best we can. As long as we go in there with the game plan at least you can have something to kind of reassure that you know you’re doing the right thing.
But there will be basketball in Nechells on Saturday evening. Rockets women are playing at 5pm against Liverpool. They’re pushing for their playoffs and they still want promotion. I think it’s still achievable at this point. It’d be great and fantastic for people to go out and support them. That would be hugely appreciated.
