Winning start to season for Pulse
Yesterday’s 45-44 win over the Northern Stars was a decent way for the Central Pulse to sign off on the national netball premiership pre-season tournament.
It meant the hosts won three of their four matches at Otaki’s Te Wananga o Raukawa, losing only to the Southern Steel.
‘‘The girls all enjoyed it; it was like going back to age-group levels where you see all the teams around. I thought we performed quite well as well,’’ Pulse captain Katrina Grant said.
Three nights on a mattress in a marae will breed a bit of familiarity with the opposition, which was the point of the weekend’s exercise.
The teams have been training in isolation for some time and there was genuine interest to see how everyone looked ahead of the new six-team competition.
‘‘You can’t look at scorelines; you’ve got to look at our combinations and who played and when we played and how well they went,’’ said Grant.
Take Friday for instance, when the Pulse beat the Mystics 53-40. Their star shooter Cathrine Latu sat the match out, as did the Mystics’ Maria Tutaia.
Yesterday, the Pulse played pretty well to beat the Stars, thanks to a Tiana Metuarau shot with 20 seconds to go. Again, though, Latu only played a quarter and, arguably, the Stars’ best player Kayla Cullen spent the weekend back in Auckland.
That meant periods of matches at the tournament resembled the real thing, with others looking more like an opposed training run.
‘‘Yesterday morning [against the Steel] was the most intense match we played,’’ Grant said.
A couple of the squads have changed considerably since last year, while the Stars are a new entity entirely. The Steel, though, look a settled and formidable outfit and loom as the best team in the competition.
‘‘That was the team we lost to so we’ll go with that [theory that the Steel are best]. But today was hard, as everyone was tired, but the girls are fit and strong and I think [Pulse] teams of the past might have fallen over a wee bit today, but this team stood up,’’ said Grant.
The skipper was particularly heartened by the Pulse’s young attack, where Whitney Souness and the 16-year-old Metuarau are making encouraging progress.
It all starts for real on March 26, when all the teams assemble in Hamilton for the first ‘‘Super Sunday’’ of the season. Then we’ll see who’s actually any good.
‘‘It’s really hard to tell preseason, because quite a few teams are missing players or didn’t have them on too long ... one player can make a big difference combination-wise,’’ Grant said.
The test for the Pulse will come on attack. Defensively, Grant, Phoenix Karaka, Claire Kersten and Sara Bayman ought to prove pretty hard to score on, but converting possession into goals will be the trick.