The Fever obliterated the Thunderbirds 74-56 in Round 1 off the back of 66 goals from 68 attempts on debut from Jamaican import Jhaniele Fowler – the most goals ever scored by one player in a national league game in this country.
But with the Thunderbirds showing signs of life in recent weeks and the Fever having dropped two of their last three games, Fever coach Stacey Marinkovich says they’ll enter the Round 8 clash wary of what might happen if they’re not on their game again.
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Thunderbirds
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MATCH-UP
The Numbers
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Fever
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26
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Mins. in Possession
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33
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6
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Gain
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13
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4
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Intercepts
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10
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11
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Deflections
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7
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86
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Goal Shooting %
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96
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“They’re playing some great netball and they’ve been very close to taking points off teams, particularly in the early stages of a game,” Marinkovich says.
“They were always going to take a bit of time to get used to their combinations, they had a huge rotation of players. They’ve certainly locked into combinations and their defensive end is very strong in their ability to get ball, so (we’re) very wary of what they’re capable of and I know that they’re building and growing with confidence.”
On top of the table and still rated as premiership favourites, the Fever have shown they’re not the unbeatable force many thought they were, after being brought undone by the Queensland Firebirds and Melbourne Vixens.
But Marinkovich says that with teams putting more time and effort into figuring out how to dismantle the Fever – who won only two games last season – it’s natural that they would come back to the pack before attempting to lift their own performance again.
“You’ve got multitudes of footage that you can actually see and scout and really look into the statistics and dynamics of every team, so certainly we’re being looked at,” she says of the homework opposition teams are doing on the Fever.
“But with the way the competition is you have to do as much homework as you can on every team at the moment. People will certainly look at how others have gotten results over us and we do the same.”
“At the end of the day we have to focus on us and we back our game plan and the capability that we’ve got.”
Marinkovich says the team’s crushing 74-60 loss against the Vixens last weekend was down to a lack of discipline, with the team failing to adjust their style of play and intensity, particularly in the second quarter, which they lost 13-26 to leave themselves 16 goals down at half-time.
Across the 60 minutes they were slapped with 77 contact and obstruction penalties, compared to the Vixens’ 54, which prevented them from building the kind of pressure required to stop Melbourne’s high octane attack end.
“Really it’s just executing our fundamental basics around our attacking and defensive behaviours,” Marinkovich says.
“We have to work hard off the ball to be able to present and be a great target and defensively we have to be setting up early and making surely we’re being really disciplined, so we do need to bring our penalty count down so we can accumulate the pressure and give our defenders the best opportunity to come in with intercepts.”
Marinkovich says that if the team wants to go deep in finals, it needs to string together four quarters more consistently, starting Saturday against the Thunderbirds.
“It’s just about getting back to being that relentless attacking defensive side. We’ve got a brand that we want to play but it’s committing to it and it’s a choice. At the end of the day we have to choose to step out on the court and execute.”
“At the moment when we haven’t executed well, we really haven’t executed, and I think that’s the part (where) we’ve got to bridge the gap between our good performances and not so good. The second part of the season you’ve got to lift the whole bar to another level altogether.”
