Coast’s seeking to bury hoodoo

KATHERINE Raymont Shield frontrunners Gold Coast will resume their push for a maiden one-day premiership tomorrow but coach Garry Lovett concedes a perennial problem could again undermine their title quest.

Having surrendered their Twenty20 crown earlier this month, the Dolphins will return from a week’s break to face third-placed University of Queensland in the 50-over format at St Lucia from 10am tomorrow.

Beaten grand finalists in March, Lovett’s charges have dominated this season’s onedayers, building a three-point lead over Sandgate-Redcliffe with five wins in six games.

Should their form hold over the last seven rounds, they could have a chance to rectify a horror grand final record that includes one-day defeats in 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16, as well as the 2016-17 one-day and T20 deciders.

They finally broke through in last season’s T20 final but Lovett said rival sides’ dependence on the return of Queensland Fire stars for finals continued to hurt his side.

“A lot of these other clubs have five to six state players and haven’t got the junior program we’ve got. We maintain our girls and we try to win as many games as we can when the state girls are away,” said Lovett, whose Dolphins squad includes Fire trio Delissa Kimmince, Sammy-Jo Johnson and Georgia Redmayne.

“A lot of other clubs tend to concentrate on having their state girls available. (Winning without ours) is what we’ve done really well over the last 10 seasons.

“Maintaining our juniors is one of the reasons we’ve done so well over the years. We’ve been in that many finals and we do it without our state girls … and when we get to finals we play these other clubs who have all their state players.”

The top five of the Wests outfit that prevailed in last season’s one-day decider have all played in the WNCL or Women’s BBL, while Johnson and Redmayne turned out for the Dolphins.

Led by an unbeaten 95 from Tara Wheeler, Gold Coast thrashed UQ by 100 runs when the sides met in their sole 50over meeting this season.

Carly Fuller, Amy Riddell and Mel Lewis will return for the Dolphins tomorrow after playing for Queensland at the Australian Country Championships in Toowoomba from January 3-11.