In one magnificent year – 1990 – Marina Moffa led the North Adelaide Rockets to titles in the WNBL, the Australian Club Championships, and the State League finals.
Marina Moffa, affectionately known as Moff, has one happy recollection of her early days in the Women’s National Basketball League – the coconut fights.
No, it’s not what you think … hard-shelled coconuts weren’t thrown at each other’s heads.
Like the other WNBL teams, North Adelaide self-funded their program by, among other things, making hundreds of lamingtons! The leftover desiccated coconut was ‘generously dispersed’ at others – afterwards and perhaps during.
In the early 1980s, that fund-raising helped cover costs of interstate travel, meals, accommodation, uniforms, bus hire etc.
The frenetic road trips to Melbourne or Sydney are still talked about today – a game Friday night, Saturday night and then again early afternoon on Sunday.
Utterly exhausted, players would turn up for work or uni lectures on Monday mornings. “All of the games were extremely competitive and tested our resilience and fitness,” she says by way of understatement.
Delivering the Yellow Pages to households was another fundraiser.
Marina Moffa played for 15 years in the WNBL with North Adelaide, West Adelaide, Dandenong and finally with the Adelaide Lightning. Her total of 296 WNBL games is the 7th highest number of games played in the League.
But it was the 1990 year that stands out when the North Adelaide players took all before them – the WNBL title, the Australian Club Championships, and the State League premiership.
Marina Moffa was a rebounding, scoring forward with the Opals for 12 years – 1984 Olympics and 1988 Olympics (4th).
Her international career might’ve included a third Olympics, but the Opals missed qualifying for the 1992 Games in unusual circumstances. She also took part in the 1990 FIBA World Cup in Malaysia, the Opals finishing 6th.
Marina Moffa is a popular figure in basketball circles, her fun-loving ways seemingly always at the centre of social and formal basketball events. She is a Life Member of the WNBL.
