Tara Murray
It’s seventh heaven for the City West Falcons with the club winning its seventh Victorian Netball League championship title on Wednesday night.
Having won the last two championships in 2019 and 2022, the Falcons made it a hat-trick of wins with a hard fought win against the Boroondara Express.
The Falcons led by six goals at quarter time, before the Express started to take control of the game and led by two goals at half time.
For much of the third and early in the fourth quarter, it was goal for goal.
The Falcons regained the lead three minutes into the last quarter and they didn’t let it go. A strong defensive finish sealed a 60-54 win for the Falcons.
Falcons coach Marg Lind said they had to put everything out there to come away with the win.
“I think Boroondara really took it to us,” she said. “They obviously had nothing to lose and they had a great finals series.
“We just had a little buffer in the last quarter.”
Lind said Boroondara changed things up in the middle quarters defensively to try and shut down Maggie Lind and Montana Holmes.
She said it worked really well, but they were able to adjust and get the game back on their terms.
“I think once we were able to free it up a bit, just let the ball go,” she said.
“We had Maggie coming long which helped and Montana getting a bit of ball deeper, where we were probably sitting in the pocket early in the second quarter that hurt.
“I thought Lucia [Fauonuku] made a really good difference in the last two quarters, pushing them up the court a bit and adding that transverse option and we swung the ball a little bit which put them off guard.”
Lind said defensively they did a really good job with everyone on court making a contribution.
Holmes was awarded the best on court medal.
Jane Cook shot 51 goals for the Falcons in a solid performance at goal shooter.
Sophie Hanrahan was another one of the stars in defence, particularly in the second half when she moved back into goal keeper.
Her performance wasn’t nearly to be though.
“There is a broken finger,” Lind said of Hanrahan. “It was 50-50 for her to even play, the finger was looking pretty good and splinted pretty well.
“Good on her. It was gutsy and that is what it takes to win finals.”
For the Falcons this is one of their hardest championships to win. While they didn’t lose after round one, there were many nervous moments with making sure they had all bases covered for finals.
Lind said she still doesn’t know how they did it.
“It was tough and there was a lot of pressure this season, making sure we had enough players qualified,” she said.
“Kids like Molly Kennedy making the drive down from Shepparton to give us that extra midcourt, she didn’t get on tonight bit did a really good job.
“Credit to all the girls, It was hard concentrating on the World Cup, having to come back to the Falcons. It must have felt a bit surreal for some of them.
“Kim [Borger] was actually injured and probably couldn’t have played tonight anyhow, but her presence and support was fantastic.”
For the Falcons it wasn’t all joy on Wednesday night, with their under-19 side falling short of defending their title losing to Melbourne University, 45-32.
Lind said the side was a bit wasteful and a bit nervous, but with many of them still 15, 16, they have a few years to come before they hit their straps.
Overall, Lind said it had been a successful season for them with all three teams making finals and walking away with one premiership.
“Great club effort for the western suburbs,” she said.
With the competition format changing after this season, it’s an end of the era for the VNL as it is known.
Lind said that was something that they had really focused on. Co-captain Maggie Lind also made mention of it in her post game speech.
“We saw this as the last VNL game as is,” Marg Lind said.
“It was important to us and really important to me. I felt like we won the first one and we wanted to win the last one, not so much worried about back to back, more like the book ends, so we got there.”
“Up until tonight we had more premierships than all the clubs together, so we’re probably about square now which was a big effort.”
