Western Roar kicked off Round 4 of the Gold Industry Group West Australian Netball League Open Division with a 60-43 win over East Freo Sharks on Friday night.
Following a delayed start to the season due to COVID-19, the competition commenced at Round 4, with the first three rounds being rescheduled at dates and times to be confirmed in due course.
Roar started well with first hands to the ball and played a neck to neck game with the Sharks until the second half.
Seamless play created by Sharks’ Ella Sigley and Courtney Kruta through to Zoey Baxter who found the net, just wasn’t enough to keep up with Roar as they upped their game in the second half.
Sharks started strong but failed to maintain tight play as Roar applied the pressure with Zoe Spencer reaching heights in defence to intercept and create turnovers in the mid and attacking court.
Western Roar coach, Dylan McPherson, said the team’s ability to “hustle” guided them to victory.
“Sharks are very talented they made the prelim finals last year, we knew we had to sustain their early pressure in the first quarter and a half and then once we got a lead just really tried to suffocate everything they were doing and I thought we did that really well,” McPherson said.
McPherson sent them out with an emphasis on defensive variety through implementing tactics and structure.
“This is when we started to win some of the ball and when Sharks turned around, we were doing something different,” he said.
He said the team started to find Sophia Lamers better in GS who spent three quarters of the game finding space in front of the goals and shooting 40 from her 42 attempts.
Maddison Schultz put in work on and off the ball to create opportunities for the shooters which saw Emma Putt taking over in the final quarter, scoring a further 10 goals for Roar.
“We’ve bought in some really good talent from our 20U’s so I expect hopefully that we keep winning games and are pushing for finals this year.
“We got all 12 out there, everyone did their part so I can’t really ask much more of them.”
ROUND 4 SCOREBOARD
Open
Roar 60 defeated Sharks 43
Comets 52 defeated Rangers 46
Demons 56 defeated Lightning 46
Warriors 38 defeated Jets 27
Mens
Warriors 53 defeated Roar 42
Demons 47 defeated Comets 44
20U
Rangers 61 defeated Comets 38
Demons 57 defeated Lightning 50
Sharks 52 defeated Roar 35
Warriors 73 defeated Jets 40
