Young players step up
It is rare that a two-time defending premier refuses to acknowledge itself as a competition frontrunner, but that is the case for Horsham Saints’ A Grade netball team.
The Saints have come from well back in the field to claim the past two Wimmera Netball Association A Grade premierships.
In 2017 and 2018 they finished with solid if uninspiring records of eight wins and eight losses before blitzing the field to win four straight finals.
Put another way, the Saints have a combined home-and-away season record of 16-16 during the past two years, but a perfect 8-0 record in finals.
Their two premiership victories each came by a single goal, against Minyipmurtoa in 2017 and Horsham last year.
Saints coach Shannon Cross said despite her team’s enviable finals success, it did not consider itself the team to beat in 2019.
“I don’t think we’ve ever been a competition frontrunner,” she said.
“We just seem to manage to scrape into finals and again that will be the aim for us this year.
“As we’ve shown in the past couple of years, anything can happen from there.
“We’ve got good team morale and we’re friends with each other, and that really helps us get over the line when it comes to those close games at the pointy end of the season.”
Despite not considering her side the premiership favourite, Cross admitted every other team in the association would be out to beat the Saints.
“I think the other teams will be out to get us. I think they’ll be pretty frustrated that we have come up and won two in a row,” she said. “We’ll just take them on as it comes.” This will be Cross’ third season as the Saints’ coach, but this year she will be relegated to the bench due to pregnancy.
Cross said she would love to be able to take the court, but backed her young outfit to step up and cover her absence.
“Senior players that will need to step up will be Gabby O’brien and Elly Barnett,” she said.
“They will need to take a bit more of a leadership role out on the court alongside our main leader Ashlee Grace in the centre.
“We have a good list of girls and I think my position will be easily replaced.
“We don’t have any new recruits, but we welcome back defender Larnie Hobbs who was in our premiership side two years ago and missed most of last year because of a finger injury.”
Cross said the Saints had benefitted from the return of players such as Lavinia Fox, Netball Victoria commitments, and Rene Caris, football, for last year’s finals campaign after they missed most of the home-and-away season.
She said with one of the youngest lineups in the competition, the club was simply hoping to qualify for finals and take it from there.
“Finals is a time where everyone is back and we’ve got a full list of players, which really helps out,” she said.
“We’ve got a very young list of players, as we have for the past two years, but this year we’ll be even younger again.
“We’ve got four 17 and under players in our side, so this will be our youngest side yet on the court.
“The pressure is on. It would be a dream come true if we could win three in a row, but we’ll see what happens.”