Macedon 35 def Diggers Rest 20
On a beautiful, sunny ANZAC Day we lined up against Diggers Rest. Last yeat, we sat just below them on the ladder in 3rd, so we were expecting a competitive match. With Emily and Sarah still out we welcomed a few familiar faces to our line up; Georgia, Nellie, Shanae and Red. It was an opportunity to qualify players, replace key positions, and experiment with combinations with the flexibility of a strong 10.
We started the first quarter with an intercept from Georgia on the very first centre pass but from there it was a bit shaky. We had plenty of opportunity however 10 misses quite close to post could have been costly. Thankfully Susan was incredibly strong on tbe rebound with 70% of shots rebounded this quarter. This meant only 3 of the 10 shots were lost. Down the other end, Diggers were very accurate with 6 from 7. They were taking all shots in very close range to the post, so defensively, we needed to dictate and push them further out. We had strong defensive pressure with our C through to GK all with an intercept we just needed to make sure we won the ball early and converted.
As the first quarter went on, we started to find flow in our goal circle. That line up remained but Amy moved into GK, Red into WD and Georgia into C. Georgia was instructed to drive through Diggers wall and get depth after the C pass. This was a game changer for us with so much ease in getting the ball to the circle. Accuracy this quarter improved signifanctly with Nellie taking the volume this quarter. Although our intercepts dried up this quarter, Allira had 4 recoveries in the one quarter. She combined well with Amy and together they limited scoring opportunities to 5. We were up 18 to 10 at half time.
In the third quarter, all bench players had an opportunity to apply their feedback. Shanae got her feet moving out at GD, Janayah drove hard in attack and Beth got the ball to circle edge. 7 minutes into the quarter we were on track to reach our goal of 10 goals. We had scored 7 goals and had 8 team recoveries, Janayah dominated the assists this quarter while Nellie took the volume of centre passes. Every player on court this quarter was penalised. We needed to stay disciplined in order to build pressure to force errors and use this pressure to take some defensive risks like going for an intercept. 5 turnovers last in this quarter meant we only scored 1 goal in the last 3 minutes. We went into the last quarter up 26-15.
The last quarter was our best defensively with 12 team recoveries, 7 of them belonging to Shanae. However, we struggled most this quarter in attack. With a new line up of Amy, Nellie, Janayah and Georgia we had 4 turnovers. Most of which came from forced passes under pressure when movement dried up. We needed to use our midcourters for swings, resets and triangles to reposition on circle edge and open up safe feeds into goalers. As we fatigued we also started passing cross court and over defenders, although these weren’t being intercepted this week, against a more competitive opposition they will be.
Great to have a win on the board and a consistent game played
Best on this week is Georgia with 4 recoveries 12 feeds 5 assists.
2 votes to Nellie
1 vote to Shanae
