Bird f lies high in Tactix victory
A near-perfect shooting display from Ellie Bird spearheaded the Tactix to an uplifting comeback victory to maintain their perfect record to the start of the Premiership netball season.
The visitors upset the defending champion Mystics 62-59 in Auckland on Monday night as Bird netted 51 of her 52 shots, eventually outshining Silver Ferns star Grace Nweke.
After trailing throughout the first half, the Tactix found the right recipe to get the ball flowing quickly through the court to Bird, whose height and ability to hold her space proved nigh impossible for Phoenix Karaka and her defensive partners to stop.
Nweke made 42 of her 46 shots but left the court with eight minutes to play with what looked like a right knee problem. The 22-year-old suffered a partial tear in her knee tendon during New Zealand’s World Cup campaign last year, ruling her out of the latter stages of the tournament.
While the defending champions drew to within a goal in the dying stages, Bird – who is effectively filling in for injured shooter Aaliyah Dunn – rightly had the final say to help her side improve to 3-0 and share top spot on the ladder with the
Pulse.
“All this week we’ve trained with the mindset that we had the desire to win, and we have to want it more than the other team,” Tactix goal defence Karin Burger said. “We just pulled ourselves together at halftime – we know our third quarters haven’t been great, so we wanted to come out hustling.”
Mystics skipper Mikaela Sokolich-Beatson was succinct in defeat. “We probably didn’t deserve to win it. We really let our basics slip.”
Nweke appeared to have set the tone at the outset with an emphatic leap to the hoop in the opening minute and netted as expected. And while a Kimiora Poi intercept and drive kick-started the Tactix after being 6-2 down, the Christchurch-based
side made some late lapses that allowed the Mystics to chalk up a four-point advantage at the end of the first quarter.
While Bird maintained a perfect shooting record in the second quarter, her attacking partner Te Paea Selby-Rickitt was having a difficult night, missing three consecutive attempts in one short passage of play in the third quarter.
The Tactix again drew close during a period of play which saw the contest grow notably physical, but the hosts again finished the stanza the stronger to keep the same advantage at the major break.
A rare misunderstanding between Nweke and prime passer Peta Toeava sparked a Tactix comeback, as they drew level at 33-33 within 3m 30s of the third quarter starting.
Coach Marianne Delaney-Hoshek kept altering the Tactix midcourt, with Greer Sinclair having an impact at centre as Poi moved to wing attack, and longer feeds to Bird helped give the visitors a 47-45 lead heading into the final 15 minutes.