Watson faces old team
Southern Steel netball goal keep Jane Watson is looking forward to facing her former team, the Mainland Tactix on Wednesday night.
The South Canterbury-raised Silver Fern star started her ANZ Championship career with the Christchurchbased franchise in 2012, before heading south to join the Steel in 2015.
For Watson, 27, who still lives in Tactix territory when she is not with the Invercargill-based Steel franchise, Wednesday’s match will be a chance to square off against her former teammates like Anna Thompson, Hayley Saunders, Nicola Mackle, Zoe Walker and Jess Moulds.
Watson will have a band of supporters at Wednesday’s game in Christchurch, between the southern neighbours with her family Steel supporters.
According to Watson, the Steel still have plenty to work on despite being the only unbeaten team in the competition, taking on the only team yet to register a win.
‘‘Everyone on our team is doing their own jobs, it is really important that we still have a lot of things to work on after every game and we go away and analyse it, so it is a lot of hard work,’’ she said.
‘‘Most of our training have the same routine to them, we analyse the other team and work out what we need to do and try and put that into our trainings and focus on the game that’s coming up.’’
‘‘So I guess that is the reason we do week by week and we don’t really change things hugely, I guess that works for us how we work as a team.’’
‘‘Having a lot of members of our team from last year would help as well.’’ The 1.81m netballer has impressed in the 2017 national league.
Heading into round four of the competition Watson had the most deflections in the competition with 25, sat fourth in intercepts with eight and sixth in rebounds with five.
The goal keep has formed a strong combination with both Te Huinga Selby-Rickit and NZ U21 international Abby Erwood in the defensive circle for the Steel this season, with Watson a key part of the southern combination to down the Waikato-Bay of Plenty Magic 72-59 in round three.
Meanwhile the Northern Mystics held on to grab a big win over the Waikato-Bay of Plenty Magic. Having been up by 11 approaching the end of the second quarter in Auckland on Sunday, they had to withstand a big fightback to win by five, 67-62.
The margin was closer than that for most of the final spell, and the Magic went home with a bonus point and moved top of the table, one point clear of the Southern Steel and two points clear of the Mystics and the Central Pulse.
That is likely to change on Wednesday when the unbeaten Steel face the winless Tactix.