Tara Murray
City West Falcons moved to the top of the Victorian Netball League championship ladder with a solid win against Boroondara Express on Wednesday night.
The Express entered the match on top, but having played one more game than the Falcons, and having won the first grand final match by one goal in round one.
The Falcons were able to control the game for the most part getting out to a solid 10 goal lead.
They let the Express back in the third quarter before steadying and running away for a 64-55 win.
Falcons coach Marg Lind was fairly happy with the performance.
“It was a good win,” she said. “We had our moments.
“We had a bit of a conniption in the third quarter. I thought we did really well to value the ball in attack and make sure that we allowed Jane [Cook] a little bit of extra time and that paid off on the scoreboard in the second.
“I think we just got mentally lazy. We were 10 up, had a conniption and that got back on track.”
Lind admits that they do get crazy with the ball at times and are risk takers, but sometimes they push it too far like they did in the third quarter.
“I like it… But at the same time it can put you in a tight position like it did tonight at times.
“I thought we did pretty well. We have to iron out those periods of craziness.”
Lind said they had shown a lot of improvement from the first time they faced the Express, but there was still more improvement to come.
Cook shot 52 goals for the Falcons in the win as they used just eight players.
Lind said it was a hard performance to pick a standout player from.
“I think Cookie has still been really solid this year,” she said. “Our attack end, Mon [Holmes] and Maggie had great moments and then some moments of conniption.
“Sophie [Hanrahan] the same. We didn’t really have anyone that put the four quarters together. I thought Soli [Ropati] had five minutes where she lagged off too much, apart from that she had a really decent game.
“She did a good job like she covered hard tonight and ran the ball out of the d. That’s when we got that 10 ahead.”
Lind said she thought they ran the defenders clever fully as well and were able to readjust with the Express rolling plenty of rotations.
The Falcons under-23s returned to the winners list, beating the Express 48-43.
Lind said after losing the last two weeks to the teams she believes are at the top, it was good to get a win like that.
Lind said it was good to bring Elisa Butterworth-Gonebale up from their development team.
The Falcons sit in fifth spot, percentage outside the top four.
The Falcons this week face the Wilson Storage Southern Saints.
