Jaegers Skipper Believes All-quarters Effort Will Revive Crashing Season

Newcastle Herald

Monday June 11, 2007

By RENEE VALENTINE

CAPTAIN Jane Menzies has no doubts the Hunter Jaegers can rescue their national netball league season if they start putting together four strong quarters.

In the space of a fortnight, the Jaegers have slipped from being stuck in a four-way tie for second and just four points behind competition leaders Melbourne Phoenix to sixth, two points out of the top four and eight behind the pacesetters.

The fall from grace has come in the form of back-to-back narrow losses, including a 53-49 defeat at the hands of the Perth Orioles away on Friday night in a match the Jaegers controlled early. Hunter led 15-10 at the first break before being locked at 27-all at half-time.

They were up 39-38 heading into the final period but were outscored by five goals in the deciding quarter.

"We had a bit of a problem in the previous few weeks of having a slow start to the game, so we tried to address that this week and came out really strongly," Menzies said.

"Things were going very nicely, but we had a lapse of about five minutes in the second quarter where they got a run of seven goals in a row. It just turned the whole game on its head.

"We had blown our great start, and after that we had lost momentum."

Hunter are by no means out of semi-final contention, but Menzies knows they must start winning if they are to make the play-offs for the first time.

"We've put a little bit of pressure on ourselves now having lost this game," she said.

"We said right from the start that we're just taking every game week by week, but you're always looking at getting yourself in the best spot you can and, being the last year, we want to finish as well as we can."

Hunter play the unbeaten Phoenix this week in their fourth match of five in a row on the road. They return to host Adelaide on July 1 before the league goes into a four-week break.

"We've got three games left before the break and those are really critical for us now," Menzies said.

"I think everybody knows that we can match it with whoever we come up against, and we believe in ourselves. We are just maybe making little errors in crucial periods, and we've just got to be smart enough not to do that from now on."

Also on Friday, Phoenix retained their four-point break on the rest of the league with a 67-50 win over Queensland, the Sydney Swifts beat Melbourne Kestrels 55-50 and Adelaide smashed the AIS Canberra Darters 81-42.

© 2007 Newcastle Herald

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