West Coast Fever’s pre-season was put to the test tonight against the WA All-Stars mixed team at RAC Arena, going down by one goal 59-60.
Despite the loss there were plenty of positives for the team who were without Stacey Francis and Shannon Eagland, providing opportunity for the team to implement new structures.
Fever were well supported by a crowd of 4204 and started strongly, taking an early lead into the first quarter.
Alice Teague-Neeld and Jhaniele Fowler were dominant at the attacking end, with Teague-Neeld taking shots during the two-goal period in the last five minutes of each quarter to close the margin.
The remainder of the game was hard fought with each team going goal for goal. All-Stars goal shooter Donnell Wallam was a standout and tested the defence of Courtney Bruce and Olivia Lewis.
Fever coach Stacey Marinkovich said this game is what the players needed before heading into Round 1 of the Suncorp Super Netball season on August 1.
“It gave us a really great challenge and put us under physical and mental pressure and that’s what we want going into Round 1.
Fever were up against a very physically strong team in the All-Stars, consisting of Dylan McPherson, Jerome Gillbard, Dravyn Lee-Tauora and Dan Cools which added more pressure on the Fever players.
“Tonight, I think we showed some really good glimpses of what we can put together, we’ve got a couple of weeks to refine, it was really intense defensive pressure against us and we will learn from that.” Marinkovich said.
We’ve got some work to do around our centre pass, but they had some big presence, some big bodies out there, it was good to have that defensive pressure against us.”
