Tara Murray
The City West Falcons have ticked off one of their big goals and now they reset and go again in the Victorian Netball League.
All three Falcons sides have made finals, with their championship and under-19s teams both finishing in the top two and earning double chances.
Falcons coach Marg Lind said it was nice to achieve all three teams in the finals in the final time the competition has three divisions.
“It’s the last time in the VNL as it stands, it’s a weird feeling,” she said. “We want to finish off strongly.
“We always set it as a KPI [key performance indicator] that we want all three teams in the top four.
“It’s not always achievable. We have two sides with a double chance and we think that’s as good as it gets as a club focus.”
The Falcons’ three teams finished the regular season on Wednesday night with wins against the Casey Demons.
The championship side won 65-51 to finish with a 17-1 record for the season and clearly the top side in the regular season.
Lind said it wasn’t the easiest game, but they were able to get the job done.
“There were still teams vying for finals spots so there were some tough contests across the board,” she said.
“It took a while to get away from them [the Demons] as they were pretty physical.
“Rudi Ellis [West Coast Fever defender] played goalkeeper and it was good practice for next week and a good test for Jane [Cook].
“We were undisciplined early with our ball use, we needed to use it more smartly and take an extra pass.
“It was a good matchup for us and we needed to be clean with the passes.”
Cook finished with 49 goals for the Falcons.
Lind again ran plenty of rotations as they looked at different combinations and made sure they qualified everyone they needed to.
After looking like they would be down on players due to four players at the World Cup, Lind managed to qualify everyone they had been hoping to.
“We played Molly [Kennedy] in division 1 as we couldn’t get her on the court as it was a bit tight there,” she said.
“We managed to get Molly, Kim [Borger], Soli [Ropati] and Olivia Cameron all qualified. I don’t know how we did it.”
The Falcons face the Geelong Cougars in a semi final next week, with a grand final spot on the line.
The Cougars are the only team to beat the Falcons this season, back in round one, and the two teams played in two thrillers in finals last year including the grand final.
Knowing they were going to finish first, Lind said they had been doing some scouting on other teams for a number of weeks.
“Hopefully it pays off.”
In division 1, the Falcons will face the North East Blaze in a knockout semi final, while the under-19s play the Blaze for a grand final spot.
