By Blair Burns
Narre Warren had a huge win against St Paul’s McKinnon in Southern League open netball last week as the Magpies thumped the Bulldogs by 51 goals.
Young shooter Grace Loelu shot incredibly well at the attacking end, scoring 44 goals in the 74-23 victory.
Narre Warren netball president Chelsea Tonna was pleased with the team’s performance and applauded the depth of the side.
“It was a strong win to get under our belt and a really consistent game from our nine girls,” she said.
“One of our big positives is being able to use our full bench and we have found it doesn’t really change our side too much.”
Tonna added that the depth has been a key strength of the side in past seasons and contributed to the team’s success in the Outer East League.
“We feel like being able to play our full 10 players in the past few grand finals has definitely been the difference,” she said.
“We feel like lots of other teams have five great players, but for us to be able to bring fresh legs onto the court is important.”
The Magpies are now 6-0 and are the only team in the competition yet to drop a game, and will play a familiar team this Saturday.
“We are playing against the Caulfield Bears, who we played in one of our practice matches at the start of the year,” Tonna said.
“We also played them in round one so this will be the third time playing them in a few months.
“We feel like we are really finding our feet in Southern and when we play these teams again, we can really start to implement our game plan, specific to individual teams.”
In the round one encounter, Narre Warren won by nine goals and will be looking for a similar outcome as they venture to the Rowan Road Reserve courts this weekend.
“It is our first game there on a Saturday so we are actually quite excited for that,” Tonna said.
“It is good to have the majority of our teams playing in one place and we can even head to the footy after.”
Narre Warren is still waiting to welcome back defender Sophie Gambetta who is currently overseas, but is expected to return in coming weeks.
