By Phina Newton
After an ugly game on Tuesday, the Collingwood Magpies were looking to move on and up. However, despite playing a lot better this time around, their slow start proved costly against the in-form Adelaide Thunderbirds.
A very slow start full of turnovers from the Magpies was not what they were after, Coach Nicole Richardson quickly called a time-out to stem the momentum of the Thunderbirds and chat with her team.
The effort was there from the Magpies, but they weren’t efficient on the offensive end and failed to look after the ball well. This meant they couldn’t reward their strong work on defense. Sophie Garbin had a couple of early errors and was sat, Kelly Singleton came on in her place.
The second quarter was a better effort from the Magpies, Kelsey Browne and Molly Jovic leading the charge with their high levels of energy in the midcourt. Coach Richardson encouraged her team in a time out saying they are almost there with the Thunderbirds and that they just need to do a better job at executing.
Their goalers finally found the bottom of the net. Shimona Nelson found her groove and they managed to only lose the quarter by one goal.
The Thunderbirds remained strong and had decided on putting twin towers together in the goal circle with Eleanor Cardwell and Lucy Austin.
Geva Mentor worked overtime on defense, she was constantly getting hands to balls and doing her best to deny Cardwell and Tippah Dwan. The GK had two intercepts and five deflections in the third term. Her defensive intensity lifted her teams’ energy and helped them reduce the margin, with both teams only scoring ten goals in the third term.
But for all the effort she was putting in, Shamera Sterling down the other end was doing just the same. She had nine deflections, two intercepts and two rebounds at this point and she didn’t look like slowing down.
Heading into the final quarter the midcourt duo of Jovic and Browne continued to lead the Magpies' tempo with their pace, each able to share the load of feeding the goalers.
The Magpies' defensive pressure mounted, and on multiple occasions, they were very close to stealing the ball, their prerogative clearly to attack and contest at every opportunity.
Down by eight goals, the power five was the Magpies' friend if they wanted to stay in the hunt for the win. Kelly Singleton was in fine form from deep, but it was too little too late for the Magpies, as they fall to the Thunderbirds by five goals.
