BDS Logan Thunder has paid a massive price for its extra aggression with four players being fouled out in their 79-67 loss to Townsville Fire at Logan Metro on Friday night.

The Thunder racked up a mammoth 27 fouls and the Fire made them pay converting 21 of their 28 attempts from the charity line.

But in hindsight the match was decided in penultimate quarter when the Fire scored 23-13 to blow their lead out to 13-points at three quarter time.

Despite the stirring efforts of New Zealand international, Natalie Purcell, who registered a game-high 21 points and 10 rebounds, the Thunder couldn't manage to catch their Queensland rivals, slumping to their third straight loss of the 2009/2010 WNBL season.

Thunder coach, Jason Chainey was stunned by his team's foul count, but said his players were their own worst enemy.

"I can't work out why we got stung so heavily with four girls getting taken off," a bemused Chainey said.

"But we'll have those same referees again next week, so we've got to adjust to that.

"We're probably just a quarter away to winning… we're playing three quarters of good basketball, but letting ourselves down in one quarter."

Entering the match, the Thunder had yet to claim the spoils in their past five Queensland Shootout's against the Fire.

Early it seemed it could be the Thunder's night with the home team taking a 19-16 lead into the first break, and were only down by three points at the major break.

Both teams were willing to play up-tempo, rapid transition basketball and while the shooting wasn't pristine, the strong Logan Metro crowd was lapping it up.

Four minutes into the opening quarter, Fire boss, Peter Buckle chucked his star player, Rohanee Cox into the game for her first appearance of the season.

Recovered from a knee injury she suffered while playing for the Australian Opals in August, Cox somewhat didn't seem to have a massive influence on the game, yet effortlessly top-scored for her team with 16 points.

Her dominance perhaps was overshadowed by the many team-mates she had in support.

Jo Hill (15 points, seven rebounds), Rachael Flanagan (15 points) and Leah Rush (11 points and eight rebounds) all made good contributions.

While in contrast, Natalie Purcell didn't receive enough assistance with Holly Smith (13 points) and Sarah Graham (10 points) the only other Thunder players to reach double figures.

Chainey praised Purcell's leadership, but admitted the club needed to find more scorers.

"Nat's an awesome player and a great leader and she showed that again tonight and does that week-in week-out," Chainey said.

"What we need is more out of every girl.

"We can't rely on her (Purcell). You look at our point spread over the last couple of weeks, we've got someone hitting high numbers and then others hitting 10, eight, six (points).

"We need three, four, five people getting double figures to get ourselves in a winnable situation.

"We're averaging 60 points a game at the moment- it's not going to win us games when we are giving up 70-plus points a game."