Macedon 12 DEF BY Rams 44
This game was going to be our biggest challenge against last year’s premiership side. The weather certainly came into play, with the players getting rained on and the court and ball getting slippery. This meant that there were more passing errors and fumbles than normal. In the first quarter Rams got away with good start, our ball handling not helping our cause. Some recoveries helped us gain back possession. We had real trouble getting it into our goaling third and circle, which meant for the whole game scoring opportunities were rare. The score at quarter time was 4-11. While we had less fumbles with the ball in the second quarter, we still were throwing bad passes. The defence end kept working hard but we were gaining very little reward. Throughout the whole match the Rams team were cutting through our defence with quick, direct lobs to their GS. This was something we didn’t mitigate and we continued throughout the whole match defending the same way. When playing them next, we will have to mix up our defensive styles to counter this, trying different ways to confuse the space. We ended the first half down 8-23. Our third quarter was our best in terms of keeping Rams to a lower score. It was the quarter where we had the most recoveries, gaining the ball back 11 times. Eloise had 4 gains and 2 intercepts in this quarter. We weren’t treasuring the ball in this quarter and we threw away 8 passes to the opposition as a team. Their GS scored all 8 goals for them in this quarter. We headed into three quarter time down 10-31. The last quarter was much the same as the rest of the match. This quarter saw more bad passes in the midcourt third. Goalers hardly got to touch the ball in this quarter. Abbey showed leadership throughout this game and encouraged the team consistently. Overall, our whole team never gave up or put their heads down. We never stopped having a crack at helping us get the ball down our end to score. Their GS ended the game with 37 goals for Rams, simply a force we didn’t counter. In the end, we finished the game 12-44. With three of our players coming back from sickness or injury, all three still took the court and gave it their best effort. Kudos to Rockbank who have a very well-oiled 19 and Under Netball side. As for us, we’ll keep working on our areas of improvement and look to a better scoreline next time we play them.
Best on: Abbey Lambert
