Slowly but surely, the Rollers pulled themselves back into the contest, in fact winning six jams in a row, but with only small gains to close the gap to 112-100 and then 116-108.
However, as the contact got heavier and more members of both teams spent time in the penalty box, Timaru got another big jam to sweep back out to a 130-108 advantage, which the Rollers then doggedly began to run down again - closing to 135-129 over the next six jams.
While they were tiring, the Rollers pulled their jammer through one long, physical exchange while the Timaru scorer was in the penalty box to bring themselves right back in it at 140-139 with six and a half minutes remaining.
But Timaru just cooly lifted the tempo with a huge 20-point jam, sweeping through the Roller's blockers several times at high speed while their own defence shut the home side down.
From 160-139, which rapidly became 175-139, the Rollers were too far back, although they won the last two jams to bring some respectability into the final scoreline.
"We had it in our grasp and then it was gone," said coach Mel McGhie.
"They just have an efficient blocker, constantly recycled their jammer."
When looking at the statistics, the hard-working Rollers likely won more jams than Timaru, but the southerners scored big when it counted.
"Full credit to them, they were a hard team. Power james win games sometimes," McGhie said.
