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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