Having won two of its first four matches, all of which were away fixtures, the Steel was well-placed going into round five and six.
Stadium Southland was near capacity for the Steel's first home game and the match started well enough for the home side.
Some sharp passing from the midcourt pairing of Liana Barrett-Chase and Jenny-May Coffin helped put Daneka Wipiiti into space, and the 1.94m shooter nailed 11 of her 12 attempts to help build a 18-12 at the break.
At one stage during the third quarter, the Steel led by eight but blew the lead to lose 48-50.
Five days later, at the same venue, the Steel could not get itself up for the match against the Canterbury Tactix.
It faded in the dying stages and let another valuable win slip away.
The Steel opened its campaign with a promising display in Sydney.
It lost 42-53 to the Swifts but the side showed enough to suggest the semifinals were within reach.
It scraped home against the Central Pulse in Wellington during round two, needing extra time to win 52-50, but hit some good form against the Tactix in Christchurch the following week, winning 51-42.
No New Zealand side managed to win in Australia during the round robin and the Steel was well beaten by the Adelaide Thunderbirds.
Following the disappointing losses to the Mystics and Tactix, the Steel went into its bye with some soul searching to do.
Its hopes of making the play-offs looked bleak as it could ill-afford to drop any of its six remaining matches.
The Steel emerged from the bye with a dour 41-29 win over the Pulse in Invercargill.
If anything, the win placed the team under more pressure and the Steel responded with its best performance, a thrilling 47-46 win over the Melbourne Vixens in front of a boisterous crowd at Stadium Southland.
Both sides played some polished netball but 18-year-old Julianna Naoupu calmly slotted the match-winning goal with just seconds remaining.
The Steel dispatched the West Coast Fever 58-43 in Dunedin to further fuel hope the Steel could stage a comeback and make the semis.
That belief was snuffed out with a limp performance against the Mystics in Auckland.
The Steel bounced back with a surprise win over the competition front-runner the Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic and rounded out the season with a good win against the Queensland Firebirds 54-52.
At the beginning of the season, sixth place would have seemed a good result for a side which, on paper, looked to be missing the game-breaking talent some of the other franchises possessed.
But, in winning five of its last sixth matches, it proved many of the critics wrong.
Defender Katrina Grant was one of the standouts.
The lanky goal defence made a dreadful start to the ANZ Championship when she gave up penalty after penalty in the game against the Swifts.
After sitting out the next match, Grant made statement against the Tactix and continued to improve.
Underrated goal keeper Megan Hutton had a solid year and Coffin produced some of the best form of her career.
Barrett-Chase is a speedy player with plenty of flare and some of her passes into the shooting circle were dazzling, but she also fired a few strays.
Erika Burgess won the battle of the three wing defences and was arguably the most improved player.
In the shooting circle, both Wipiiti and Megan Dehn had moments of brilliance but were ultimately disappointing.
Both finished well down the list of the competition's most accurate shooters.
Wipiiti scored 391 of her 519 (75.3%) shots at goal and Dehn 147/190 (77.3%).
As a team, the Steel topped only the winless Pulse in terms of accuracy, landing 617 goals from 816 (75.6%) attempts.
Two of the Steel's six losses came despite putting up more shots than the opposition.
Against the Mystics in round five, the Steel put up two more shots but lost by two, and against the Magic in round seven it put up two more shots but lost by nine goals.
In round 12, the Steel and the Mystics put up 61 shots each but the Mystic prevailed.
