Macedon (25) V Western Rams (22)
We knew that we had to win todays game to stay in the top 4, so there was a lot riding on it. Madi B was
missing for todays game, so Red got the call up.
We were familiar with the umpires and knew that we had to be clear on defence and make sure that we
were a clear 3-4 feet when defending. Adjusting to this meant that the quarter wasn’t filled with players
out of play and constant whistle blowing. Our defensive pressure and adjustment paid off with 9
recoveries, 1 rebound and 5 tips. the strongest our of defenders was Bianca in WA (4). The Rams played a zone style defence and we played right into their hands by playing a long game. We were struggling to adjust and stuck to our fast style of play and this caused the 5 bad passes and a step. When the ball did penetrate our goal ring we shot 6 from 10 attempts and failed to recover any of those missed shot with a rebound. We were chasing 6 – 7.
After some very clear explanation of ‘play the short ball’ we were able to move the ball safely through our attack. We still turned over 7 balls with almost identical stats to the 1st quarter. The goalers were serviced mainly by Bianca (12 times) but inaccurate goaling, shooting at 50%, meant that we were not capitalising on opportunity. Our defensive end were only penalised by contacts and cleaned up 6 intercepts, 5 gains, 2 rebounds and 5 tips. Ample opportunity and starving Rams of goaling opportunity (4/6). A very low scoring quarter from both teams and we had a 1 point lead 12 -11.
I wasn’t overly happy with only 12 goals being scored in 24 minutes of play. Taylah came on into WD and Sam back on into GS. We equaled our 2nd quarter with 7 turnovers and was heavily penalised for contacts in this quarter (11). Defensively we were on target, doing everything possible to stop the Rams from scoring. 7 intercepts, 1 rebound, 2 gains and 5 tips gave us 10 clean recoveries and 5 spoils. Shanae was especially good with 3 intercepts and Taylah in WD with 1 intercept, 1 gain and 2 tips. This pressure kept Rams to just scoring 4 from 5 attempts. Our goalers were serviced with the same amount of ball but the difference in this quarter was the Demi and B fed the same amount of balls to our goalers. We shot 8 from 11 and rebounded 2 missed goals. The score was 20- 15 and we had the best lead of the
game.
Rams did win the last quarter 7 – 5 but the effort we had put in for 3/4 quarters of the game was enough to give us the win. We reduced our bad passes to just 3 but had 3 steps and an offside that didn’t help our score. Fatigue kicked in and we were put out of play 17 times and our goaling accuracy did not help (5/ 9). Lucky we remained strong in defence because without our 4 intercepts, 2 rebounds, 4 gains and 3 tips we would not have won the game. 25 -22
Best on court goes to Shanae Brundall
