West Coast Fever confirmed their yardstick standing and put a dent in the Lightning’s finals hopes on Sunday, but the Adelaide Thunderbirds are nipping at their heels.
Catch up with all the round seven Super Netball action.
-Warren Partland
There are no more excuses for the Adelaide Thunderbirds.
They have the team to claim Super Netball supremacy, as evident by their 52-47 win over the Collingwood Magpies in Adelaide on Sunday to back up the victory over reigning champions West Coast Fever last week.
Not since 2013 when they won their second trans-Tasman crown have the Thunderbirds tasted finals action.
But the 10-year drought is surely set to end, being 10 points clear of fifth-placed Sunshine Coast Lightning at the halfway point after just one loss.
The Thunderbirds have the world’s leading goal keeper in Shamera Sterling, who started against the Magpies alongside new Diamonds squad member Matilda Garrett and fellow Jamaican Latanya Wilson.
At the other end of the court, Eleanor Cardwell will be the starting shooter for England after Jo Harten’s decision to retire from international duties.
Then there is centre and skipper Hannah Petty, who has captained the nation’s youth team.
There is quality all over the court and every reason the Thunderbirds, who are responding to Tania Obst’s coaching, can finally return to those glory days.
ON THE DEFENCE
The early signs were ugly for the Magpies, who lost highly experienced Ash Brazill before the game due to illness, coughing up their opening two possessions to the brilliant Thunderbirds defence.
Firstly, Wilson grabbed an intercept to shut down the visitors’ opening drive. Then Sterling did what Sterling does and grabbed an intercept. There were even headaches for the Magpies on their third possession. Sterling was able to deflect the ball out of court, only for the Magpies to finally get the goal courtesy of Sophie Garbin.
The Magpies then called a time out, and not even three minutes had expired on the clock.
ON THE ATTACK
Issues with the Magpies’ attack end prompted Kelly Singleton to be introduced at goal attack after 12 minutes.
The Thunderbirds altered their midcourt five minutes into the second quarter when Petty was replaced by Tayla Williams.
Another six minutes into the contest, the home side switched Cardwell to goal attack to allow Lucy Austin to come into the game at goal shooter. The Thunderbirds reverted to their starting goal circle combination for the third quarter, only to bench Cardwell six minutes into the period and bring Austin back into the contest. Then Cardwell came back to replace Dwan. Penalties were a massive problem for the Magpies and too often players were forced to stand out of play.
The Magpies amassed a whopping 72 penalties for the 60 minutes. They were penalised an incredible 48 times in the first half with wing defence Maddie Hinchliffe guilty of 15.
Magpies goal keeper Geva Mentor earned 14 in front of England coach Jess Thirlby, in the house as preparation for the World Cup in South Africa starting in July. She got to witness Mentor go head-to-head with Cardwell in the battle of the Roses.
-Katrina Nissen
Despite jetting more than 25,000km since Round 4, West Coast Fever showed why they are back-to-back Super Netball premiership contenders. In overcoming Sunshine Coast Lightning by 10 goals, Fever have now made it hard for the Queenslanders to keep in touch with the top four.
Fever coach Dan Ryan acknowledged his side was fatigued after clocking up so much air travel.
“It’s even more praising the efforts of the players to have gotten through the load they have over the past four weeks,” he said.
“We saw the fatigue creep up last week (against the Thunderbirds).”
The match started at a frenetic pace with both teams going goal for goal. Eventually, West Coast’s smothering defence caused the first break. Once the gates opened, the momentum swung all Fever’s way, and they quickly piled on a first term, eight-goal lead.
Lightning’s trusty ball winner, Karla Pretorius was kept unusually quiet by Sasha Glasgow who outpaced and outsmarted the experienced South African.
Fever’s Alice Teague-Neeld continued to show why she is the league’s most in-form wing attack. She stormed her way to 37 feeds and 30 centre receives for the match. MVP Jess Anstiss flew under the radar but notched up defensive and attacking stats while sending Annie Miller to the bench.
During a time out, Fever’s coach Dan Ryan called for an aggressive mindset to go along with a changed line-up. He went for a more defensive on-court team which immediately paid dividends, keeping Lightning’s centre pass to goal rate at a disappointing 65 per cent for the first half.
Conversely, Fever maintained a formidable 91 per cent across the match. Ryan praised the effort after describing last week’s conversion rate as “awful”.
With an incredibly low 19 turnovers between both teams, Lightning defenders found it extremely difficult to crack Fever’s lead. However, in a captain’s run, Steph Wood kept her side in touch by sinking seven super shots.
Lightning carried the momentum into the final term and could have crumbled when Eagland went down with a knee injury. However, they maintained composure to mount a brave fightback but had too large a margin to claw back, as Fever continued to punish on the scoreboard.
Speaking post match, Lightning coach Belinda Reynolds said maintaining focus when players go down is hard, particularly when it is a suspected knee injury.
“Obviously, we have had a few ACL injuries in our camp so it hits home hard for some of our players. We will all get around Shannon and hope for the best,” she said.
Fever captain Courtney Bruce was a standout for her team, applying intense pressure over every shot and collecting two rebounds and two intercepts for the match. Jhaniele Fowler also put together a massive haul, shooting a perfect 65 goals from as many attempts.
DIAMOND DOUBLE
It was an all-Diamonds squad affair at one end of the court as Lightning’s Cara Koenen and Steph Wood went head-to-head with Courtney Bruce and Sunday Aryang. The quartet have all but secured their spots on the plane to Cape Town, with the only question mark over Aryang who will be fighting for supremacy over Firebird Ruby Bakewell-Doran and Thunderbird Matilda Garrett.
THE YIELD OF TEAGUE-NEELD
Alice Teague-Neeld is having the best season of her career and convincingly leads the league for centre pass receives and goals assists – two stats usually held by Aussie captain, Liz Watson. Given her stellar form it is surprising that the 26-year-old wasn’t named in the recently announced Aussie Diamonds squad. Could we expect her to be a late call-up by the end of the season?
