Fowler ready to cap dominant season
NETBALL
MAYBE we did not appreciate just how good the Southern Steel had it for all those years.
Jhaniele Fowler turned in her share of dominant performances in a blue dress.
Now she is wearing green — and one game from completing one of the single most dominant seasons in netball history.
The Jamaican goal shooter was nearperfect as she powered her West Coast Fever into Australia’s Super Netball grand final.
She shot 60/61 as her team toppled Laura Langman’s Sunshine Coast Lightning 7359 on the Sunshine Coast on Sunday night.
The Fever will now meet the Melbourne Vixens on Sunday.
It was hardly an outlier though.
The 1.98m shooter has made an almost unfathomable 910 goals from 967 attempts.
She has also nabbed 66 offensive rebounds, finishing most of her misses on the second opportunity.
Fellow Jamaican Romelda Aiken has made the nextmost shots with 583.
South African Lenize Potgieter, who played for the Steel in 2019, finished fifth with 437 goals from 467 attempts.
Fowler is in her third year with the Fever.
Before that, she played for the Steel from 2013 to 2017, making 71 appearances for the side.
In that time, she scored 3374 goals, including 790 in 2017 — a year in which she scored 70 in one game against the Mainland Tactix.
That same season the team went unbeaten in the inaugural ANZ Premiership.
She was similarly dominant for the team in the now defunct transtasman league.