The Canberra Capitals' fortress came crashing down in a 70-65 loss to the Southside Flyers at the National Convention Centre on Sunday.

The defeat in front of a 1642-strong crowd - Canberra's biggest of the season - brings an end to the Capitals' run of 16 consecutive home wins.

The Capitals remain the only team to have beaten the Flyers. That win came on what Canberra coach Paul Goriss labels a near-perfect night.

This time, "some people had a perfect night, some people had an off night".

When probed about who had an off night, Goriss decided to "leave that to other people".

The whistles of the three match referees continued to fall silent when many in the crowd were in uproar about contact on Capitals stars Marianna Tolo, Kia Nurse and Kelsey Griffin in a physical contest.

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The standard was summed up when Tolo was fouled out with seconds remaining, and Southside were awarded and shot a free throw before Canberra substitute Alex Delaney was on the court.

The standard of the league's officiating drew criticism last season, notably following a controversial finish to game two of the grand final series.

But Goriss opted to stay out of a deeper discussion and says the Capitals simply didn't shoot the ball well enough to knock over the competition front-runners.

"Realistically, I don't think much went wrong other than our shooting," Goriss said after the Capitals shot at 34 per cent from the field.

"I've got full confidence in the girls and the team that we do enough on any given day to make them. Tomorrow we would come back out and shoot at a better clip than we did.

"We didn't reward ourselves for the good looks we got. Defensively, I thought we were fine. We kept them under the target we wanted to keep them to.

"I don't know whether we were on the same page offensively. Our ball movement wasn't crisp, there was a lot of standing around off the ball.

"Our defence was up there but our offence wasn't great."

Southside were determined to go through Bec Cole (21 points) and Mercedes Russell (17) while the hosts spread the scoring load.

It took Kelsey Griffin - the league's reigning most valuable player award winner, no less - the best part of 27 minutes to score her first points.

Griffin would finish with four points as Tolo led the way in the paint with 16 while Kia Nurse (13) and Olivia Epoupa (11) reached double figures.

Canberra launched one final push to tie things up before Olivia Epoupa's pass to Keely Froling went awry.

It left the hosts to wonder what might have been after Southside came to town bracing for a physical encounter.

"You could see we were pushing really hard, attacking, trying to take the bumps, but then not always taking the right shots or getting to the right spots," Tolo said.

"It was a tough game out there, it was pretty physical. They got the right shots at the right times when we didn't do that.

"We were expecting that [physicality] and trying to over compensate but it didn't really work in our favour instead of just playing basketball."

"They played really well, and they have been playing really well."

AT A GLANCE

WNBL round nine: SOUTHSIDE FLYERS 70 (Bec Cole 21, Mercedes Russell 17, Leilani Mitchell 15) bt CANBERRA CAPITALS 65 (Marianna Tolo 16, Kia Nurse 13, Olivia Epoupa 11) at the National Convention Centre. Crowd: 1642.