Solid start for the 2nd team despite a loss

In the first quarter there was lovely movement around the circle by Nichola Morrison at GS and Lois Matks at GA and it seemed that they missed hardly any of their goals. Down in defence there was great turnovers by Sadie Burch at GK and Elize Ansell at GD, however the Hornets shooters were not missing. An interception by Jessica Saville at WA got the ball quickly back down to the circle, however, the Club defensive work needed to be a lot tighter down the court. The score at the end of the quarter was 11-14 to Hornets.

A change was made in the second quarter with Lola Wheeler swapped on to WD for Shannon Murray and in the first minute she got a fantastic interception which Club managed to score a goal from. Lovely play by Debbie Greenslades at C, Jess and Lois bringing the ball down the court saw them feeding good balls into Nic who just couldn't miss. Elize and Sadie were getting rebounds from the rare Hornets missed goals and Elize made an amazing interception in this quarter to turn a goal around. With added pressure from Elize and Lola they were causing Hornets to make mistakes, although unfortunately Club also made some mistakes by throwing away balls with bad decision making and lack of eye contact with each other. At half time Hornets had got another goal ahead to lead 20-24.

Quarter three was not the best period for Club as at the end they were 8 goals down. Unfortunately the Hornets shooters continued to be extremely accurate which put major pressure onto Sadie and Elise in defence to stick tighter. The team realised they needed to defend tighter which lead to some great interceptions and turnovers by Lola, Lily Whitehead who was on at C and Sadie at GK. There was also some excellent straight line balls going down the court but Club also threw away too many passes with lack of concentration and unfortunately Hornets had extended their lead at the end of the quarter to 31-39.

In the final quarter of the game Club were not going to accept that this was a loss just yet, and had a strong start, still determined to win. Nic came out to GA and Lois moved back to GS and Shannon came on as WA. There were some great moves around the circle and shots kept going in when given the ball but unfortunately they weren't given enough chances in the attack end. Club tried to put pressure on the Hornets players to try and force mistakes but once the Hornets shooters had the ball in their circle they did not miss. With new additions to the team Club did struggle to get used to how everyone played and the final score was 43-52 to Hornets.

Match report by Paige Money

After being truly disappointed with not beating Hornets, with time to reflect, I realised there was more to smile about than to frown about. The 3 L’s (Lily, Lola and Lois) had great debuts for the 2nd team and showed that they were young girls with wise netballing brains and never looked fazed at all out on the court when mixing it with the big girls. Great start too for newbie Jess S, who is improving every week and just gets stuck right in as soon as the games starts. Credit also has to go to Elize who played two full games on Saturday and never gave up fighting for the ball and to Nic who was commanding in the circle and despite the GK trying to foul her out of the game with very unusual unorthodox style of defending which failed to rattle her. These performances made it extremely difficult for me to find a player of the match so I am awarding a joint one to Elize and NIc who kept us in the game.

It was great to be able to use the whole bench and I was pleased with how players coming on throughout the quarters settled into the game straight away. Overall a good team performance, looking forward to the great team performance which I don’t think will be that long in coming!

Coach - Sonia Grant