You would think that the remaining teams in the league to play them would be looking forward to their turn to cash in on valuable points, but according to Maddy Proud from the NSW Swifts – it’s now an extra pressure, because any single bonus point dropped is worth double against the other teams on the ladder.
Proud said, “We have been speaking this week about treating this game like a Grand Final and giving it everything we’ve got, we think it will really be a season defining game for us.
“They definitely put their best game out on the weekend [against Lightning] and they are only going to get better, but I hope that we are doing the same as we are growing every week as well.
“Any team that you play a bit later in the season have already had a few games to pull it all together, but the Thunderbirds will most likely improve the most as time goes on, given they are such a new team now.”
NSW Swifts currently sit a position below Sunshine Coast Lightning on the ladder, despite having won more games than the reigning champions – which is down to the fact that Lightning have taken more bonus points from their opening five matches.
Proud said, “I would like to think come the end of the season it is going to work itself out with all the bonus points.
“It’s a little bit hard when you do see that we have won more games, but still do sit a little bit further down the ladder.
“For us we have got to then work on winning every quarter, I don’t think we have won a first quarter yet this season, so we must make every point count – if you think about our last quarter against Magpies we let ourselves down at the end there, that is another point that we missed.”
The bonus point system was brought in for Suncorp Super Netball Season 2 to create a game within a game and reward four quarter efforts, one thing the Swifts are looking to work on.
They are a team renowned this season for battling hard and pushing to last seconds to win, having won at least one of the last two quarters on four occasions this season – which wasn’t the way things panned out in their last campaign.
“It’s funny because last year our problem was always our last five to ten minutes, where we always seemed to be in a good position and then in the last quarter went away from everything that got us into that position in the first place.
“We’ve been able to turn that around this year, where now our last quarter is where we put out our best performances, but consistency is always going to be something that we strive for and we want to make sure that we start games well and we finish them well,” Proud said.
If the Swifts want to find themselves in the top four come the end of the season, they will need to be more ruthless on court and ensure when they are playing well they dominate teams.
Proud said, “We are all a bit too nice to each other, if one of us makes a mistake then about three of us want to make the person feel better and then we end up making a mistake as well.
“The point is that we make sure that if we do make one mistake that we get the ball back and we don’t make it happen again.”
The Swifts take on the Adelaide Thunderbirds this weekend at the Quay Centre in Sydney, 1pm AEST.
For tickets follow the link, otherwise you can watch the game live on Channel 9 or 9GEM in Western Australia.
