Jovic loss will not stop Joeys
ST JOSEPH’S will enter today’s qualifying final against St Albans without midcourt gun Molly Jovic, but coach Emily Post is confident her team has what it takes to earn a win and a crack at Newtown & Chilwell next Saturday.
Jovic has an ankle injury and is expected to be right for week two of finals, where Joeys will face the Eagles should they overcome the Supersaints first.
A three-goal win against Geelong West in Round 18 was an ideal way to round out the season for St Joseph’s after a surprise loss to Colac, and Post said she was feeling good about Joeys going into their first finals campaign since 2017.
“I think the last two weeks have been really good for us, especially given we haven’t had our full team with some injuries,” she said.
“It is good to know that when we didn’t have a lot of room to move and a lot of our team was playing out of position that we could still come away with the win in tight circumstances.
“The West game was a really good one for us coming into finals and obviously it was disappointing losing to Colac but we know what we need to fix if we do have to play them again.”
A quirk in the GFNL fixture means today will be the first time St Joseph’s, who finished the home-and-away season in second position, will face St Albans (third) since Round 5, when the Supersaints scored a nine-goal win.
But given the frequency that players from both teams meet in other competitions, namely the Victorian Netball League, during the year Post said she did not believe it would be an issue for her side.
“We are really excited because we haven’t come up against them since the start of the season so it will be interesting to see how we have progressed over the year and see where we are at now,” she said.
“But we don’t really think about that at all, and because a lot of our team play VNL we come up against St Albans players all the time.
“So it is pretty much a team we know quite well even though we have only played them just once during the year.”
The loser of today’s clash will play the winner from tomorrow’s elimination final between Colac and Geelong West.