SILVER FERNS What went wrong
JANINE Southby summed up yesterday’s Silver Ferns performance perfectly in her postmatch television interview.
The New Zealanders made too many turnovers, circle movement was poor and they did not convert enough chances.
They got enough defensive gains, but when they did, they were unable to make them count.
That, in a nutshell, was what the 5445 loss to England came down to.
In tight games in any sport you have to have that killer instinct and this team does not seem to have it.
The loss left the Ferns sweating on the result of last night’s Uganda v Scotland game.
Uganda needed to win by 38 goals to knock the Ferns out of medal contention at the Commonwealth Games.
While it did not manage that, winning 5737, it was a little too close for a team which has made every World Cup and Commonwealth Games final since 1975.
Times have changed, of course, and it would be arrogance at its finest to expect this team to do well simply because past teams have.
England was better on this day, just as it has been in recent times.
Its defence was outstanding, with Geva Mentor and Ama Agbeze preventing the Ferns’ shooters from getting position close to the goal.
That saw New Zealand rely on longer shots for much of the match.
Maria Folau stepped up in that in that regard, with a barrage of longrange goals.
But an overall shooting percentage of 73% was not good enough from the Ferns.
Te Paea SelbyRickit seemed nervous at 63%, while Bailey Mes had more turnovers (four) than goals (three).
Simplify it all down and it comes back to the same thing — you need to get the ball in the goal to win games.
Sometimes it really was that simple.
Other times it was the inability to create space and get position close to the goal. That made feeding harder, which was a source of turnovers.
But again, at other times those turnovers came simply from poor optiontaking and poor execution.
Seven turnovers in both the third and fourth quarters was too many, particularly when England had just two and three respectively.
During that period England pulled away, taking a 2821 advantage after a tight first half.
On the defensive end New Zealand did more than enough to win. You give yourself every chance of doing that when you hold your opponent to 54 goals. But your defence is going to have to be phenomenal to beat a good team when you only score 45 yourself.
Rarely is a defence that phenomenal.
The Silver Ferns had enough gains and restricted England’s scoring enough. But they were unable to make that count.
Great teams will follow up a big play with another big play in crucial moments.
This team would score off a gain, then turn the ball over off its own centre pass.
That inability to be ruthless — particularly when it has been behind — really has been costly.
You cannot say this was from a lack of effort, as the intensity levels were as high as ever.
Indeed, captain Katrina Grant was brought to tears in her postmatch television interview when asked about comments the side was not playing with pride.
Sometimes a team is just not good enough and that has been the case with this one.