Friday, 6 July 2012

Woods Panthers use first quarter to propel them closer to Subway Cup finals


The Woods Panthers have defeated Health and Life Phoenix 48-35 on Tuesday night after a dominant first quarter performance set up the win at Netball SA Stadium.

The win propels Woods to fifth on the Subway Cup ladder and they trail Spring Gully Newton Jaguars by just one spot as the race to the finals continues to intensify.

Woods coach Trudy Barker was unsurprisingly positive after defeating third placed Phoenix and falling one goal short of second placed Contours Matrics last Saturday.

“If we can stick to that momentum, we will challenge any team above us and that’s what we’re hoping for and you never know who’s going to lift to the occasion.”

“Finals are finals, it’s anyone game.” 

Woods dominated the start and finish of the first quarter to grab the lead and their consistent effort kept the Phoenix at arms length for the following three quarters.

Woods GS Kim Walker was strong under the net making some wayward feeds look very good and WA Alice Murt displayed her usual speed around the mid-court. Woods took an 8-goal lead into the first break.

After a slow start to the match Phoenix found some of their recent good form to convert some extra possession into goals, scoring 3 in a row to narrow the margin. After trailing by 10 goals mid-way through the second, things seemingly couldn’t get any worse for Phoenix.

But then they did. GS Kylie Jarrett was forced from the court with an injury complaint, which allowed Steph Ventrice an opportunity in the Premier League. Her extra mobility around the circle seemed to help though and Phoenix cut the margin back to 7 ad half time.

Quick work was needed from the Phoenix attack to try and move Woods’ GD Fiona Crowe and GK Sally Fuller around the circle in the third. Although they were successful early in the third quarter cutting the lead to 5, the Woods defence regained control.

A nice intercept from WD Claire Alvino stopped crucial Phoenix momentum. Woods were executing much better then Phoenix and led by 8 goals at the last change.

Once again Phoenix tried to fight their way back into the game but Woods remained focussed throughout the final quarter. Any chance of a comeback was controlled and with time running down, Woods extended their lead to win by 13 goals.

Barker acknowledged the importance of the match and credited her side with a wonderful team effort saying that finding a best player would be difficult.

“It was an important win, more so for our confidence and our playing style, to get it right. To win every quarter was a great effort by all the girls defensively and in attack, so yeah it was good,” Barker said.

“That first quarter our start was amazing so credit to the girls, they’ve learnt their lessons, they can push on they just believed in themselves.

“It was a good team effort from every single one of them, it’s going to be hard to pick a best player.”

Phoenix coach Lee Anne Cummins while disappointed with the loss was able to find some positives from the match. And while finals would be in the back of her sides’ minds the focus will be on their round 20 encounter with competition front-runners ETSA Contax.

“It’s obviously disappointing, we’ve beaten them the previous two times so you sort of want to finish off in that minor round clean sweep,” she said.

“Woods certainly put a lot of physical pressure on which made it hard for us to adjust and made us hesitate with giving that first ball, which obviously then made us second guess and set some opportunities up for them as well. So we just need to make sure that we’ve got the confidence to give it to our teammates.

“Training tomorrow night will just to be re-group and focus on Contax.”

In the other matches played, The Royal Cougars defeated Stellar Homes Garville 61-46 to keep their finals hopes alive. ETSA Contax survived a close encounter with Contours Matrics winning 49-45 in a match that featured multiple lead changes.


Quarter-by-quarter

Q1:   Woods  16 – 8  Phoenix

Q2:   Woods  25 – 18  Phoenix

Q3:   Woods  33 – 25  Phoenix

Q4:   Woods  48 – 35  Phoenix


Match Shooting Stats

Woods   48/65   73.85%

K. Walker:   37/45   82.22%

E. Thomas:   11/20   55%


Phoenix   35/45   77.78%

K. Jarrett:   8/10   80%

M. Gibb:   21/25   84%

S. Ventrice:   6/10   60%






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