Netball Round Up

On a perfect afternoon for netball, Itchen arrived with two teams and an extremely keen coach. Knowing the coach as I do I knew that there was a battle ahead and had been fortunate enough to engage the services of an extremely good umpire. They too had brought a recognised umpire so there would be no excuse of the umpiring should the result go the wrong way !

Itchen are fortunate to have an England U17 player in their squad, however I reminded the girls that 7 players make a team and that there was nothing to worry about. The game started, quite physical from their point of view but Worthing started well with the players all working extremely hard on defence when the shots didn’t go in to stifle Itchen. Worthing ended the first quarter 9 -4 ahead.

The game continued in a similar vein with Worthing continuing to stretch their lead, whilst never making it look easy. The game was dominated by the defence on both sides with Worthing’s shooters being more accurate than Itchen. The second quarter ended 16-8, the third 26 -13 so at this point Itchen only had half score. Worthing dropped off in the last quarter, Anna Van Eevelt who had outplayed her opponent had suffered an injury to her thumb, Vicky Bowles who was playing her first game of the season, due to injury and illness of other squad members, was suffering with her long term back injury and with 2 mins to go, we lost Mele Jackson to her on going thumb injury, finishing the game with 6.

From the coaches point of view, it was great to see everything we worked on in training over the past few weeks working on court. Itchen made Amber man of the match, I woud have to say that I felt it was the defensive formation of Mele and Mele that won us the game – sorry Amber !!

But a massive win and well done to all and thank you to Vicky for playing.

Tina