Victorious Saints still a work in progress

SAINTS coach Jillian Joyce believes her players still need to work on their consistency following a tough 50- 47 win over Neptunes in Townsville City Netball Premier League action on Monday night.

Saints claimed a measure of revenge after dropping last year’s grand final to Neptunes, but they had to work for it after leading by as much as 10 goals before the reigning premiers fought back.

“It was nice for those girls who were in the team last year to turn the tables a little bit in the replay, but there’s some real areas that we need to focus on,” Joyce said.

“We had slowly built through the first half and we made some changes and didn’t probably adjust as well as we could have to those changes.

“We lost a bit of concentration towards the back end of the game and we opened the door for them to come back at us in the last quarter.

“We’ll be working on that consistency to finish strongly and maintain the pressure.”

Joyce said she has been pleased with Saints’ efforts in her first season as coach after previously playing and coaching at various levels in Australia and New Zealand.

“With a change of coach comes a bit of a change of perspective and they’ve really had an open mind to the things I’ve been asking them to work on and it’s getting better each week,” she said.

“We have a pretty strong base of players across the club and it’s really good to be taking that talented group and just tweaking a few things.”

Burdekin haven’t lost any momentum following the Easter break after claiming a 40- 35 win over Highlanders.

Highlanders have yet to claim a win this season, but they pushed the unbeaten Silverlinks for four quarters.

In the other game, MarianVixens proved too good for Runaways, winning 60- 32.