Inglewood bounce back
Inglewood got back to winning ways in the premier one netball competition on Thursday night with a dominant 57-40 win over Stratford-Eltham at the TET Multisport Centre.
After falling to a one-point defeat against Naumai last time out, Inglewood were looking to get back on the right foot heading into the playoffs, with Thursday’s match their last of the regular season.
They wasted little time asserting their dominance in the match, taking advantage of every opportunity to disrupt passes and snare extra possessions.
Stratford-Eltham were shooting well in the opening quarter and managed to stay close to Inglewood for the most part to end the period 13-10 down.
They came out the better of the two sides in the early stages of the second period, however a four-goal run from Inglewood was a sign of things to come.
On the back of some strong play throughout the court, Inglewood built a big lead to firmly take control of the match.
Goal attack Nikita Hall played a big role for the side as she shot well, and when she missed she seemed to always come up with the rebound.
Stratford-Eltham found themselves fall behind by as many as 13 goals in the quarter as they couldn’t find a way to slow down their opposition.
Inglewood outscored StratfordEltham 16-6 in the second quarter to lead 29-16 at half time.
Stratford-Eltham needed to find something to stem the flow of goals in the second half, however the damage had already been done.
While they tried hard, they found themselves down by as many as 20 goals in the second half, with Inglewood eventually taking a 17-goal win.
‘‘It’s what we obviously wanted coming off a loss last week, which is never a bad thing actually,’’ Inglewood coach Annette Perrett said.
‘‘I thought they played well. defensively we got a lot of ball. It took us a little bit of time to warm up in attack, but once we got into it I thought Nikita had a really good game at goal attack.
‘‘Now I guess it’s looking forward to the semis and going forward from there.’’
In the other matches, Taylor Kahui continued her run of strong performances to lead Naumai to an important 50-34 win over New Plymouth Girls’ High School, while Tysons beat New Plymouth Old Boys 86-55.
As a result, Tysons, Inglewood, Naumai and Stratford-Eltham finish as the top four in that order and will go on to play in the semifinals, with Old Boys and Girls’ High missing out.