An astonishing 16 years after helping Sydney to their last WNBL title, triple Olympian Belinda Snell has the chance to put aside the heartbreak of several subsequent near misses.
The minor premiership-winning Flames have won 10 straight games going into the best of three grand final series starting on Saturday.
They host the opening game against Dandenong and expect a near capacity crowd.
Snell, 36, is in her third stint with Sydney having rejoined the Flames this season and is indisputably one of the club's all-time greats.
She was their leading scorer in the 2000-01 season when they won the title and also spearheaded their offence the following four seasons, in which they lost the grand final.
The Flames subsequently lost two more season deciders in 2007 and 2008 after Snell left and the player herself endured a fifth grand final loss in Bendigo colours two years ago.
"Snelly has been just awesome," Flames coach Cheryl Chambers told AAP.
"She just has such a selfless nature. There's not any selfishness about her at all.
"Her leadership has been absolutely fantastic."
Snell has had plenty of support this season with Opals guard Leilani Mitchell and import forward Asia Taylor making the WNBL All-Star team.
Steph Cumming has been an offensive star for Dandenong, who like Sydney had injury issues to key personnel through the first half of the campaign.
Sydney had a 2-1 season split over Dandenong with the home team winning each game.
"They are a team that likes to score in transition, we need to be able to slow them down," Chambers said.
Dandenong, who last won the title in 2012, dominated the league until just before Christmas.
They couldn't reproduce the same level of consistency in the new year, but edged Perth 2-1 in their semi-final series.
"The girls could have dropped their bundle and gone 'oh my God what's going on', but they just stayed so tight together," Rangers coach Larissa Anderson, who was once coached by Chambers when they were both at Bulleen, said.
"In our second year together with this group, I couldn't be more proud of making a grand final."
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