Image supplied by The Standard
Hope you all enjoyed the Bye last week and were able to celebrate Mother’s Day
Our thoughts go out to Ally Feely of Port Fairy and Amanda Douglas of Hamilton Kangaroos who both acquired season ending injuries in the last round. Wishing you both a speedy recovery and hopefully we’ll see you around the courts again soon.
Congratulations to Jacqui Arundell who played her 100th Open game for the Terang Motlake FNC in Round 4. Jacqui has played all of her Junior netball at Terang Mortlake and played her first Open Game in 2013 as a 15 year old. This wonerful achievement will be celebrated at their home game today – Congratulations Jacqui.
My predictions for this week.
South Warrnambool, who continue to get better each week, will be too strong for Port Fairy. Ally Feely will be missed through the midcourt for Port Fairy and South’s ability to play well as a team will help them take the points here.
Hamilton Kangaroos make the journey to Cobden this week and will find it tough against the ladder leaders. Cobden should win comfortably.
Portland travel to the D.C. Farran oval to take on the Bloods. If the young bloods defenders can get on top of the Portland shooters, they could score a narrow win over the Tigers.
North Warrnambool, despite their ladder position will be very competitive against 3rd placed Koroit. I believe North lack depth through their centre court and will struggle to match the Saints in this area. This will be enough to give Koroit the advantage at the final Siren.
The Blues will come up against Camperdown at Leura Oval. This should be a close game and with the possibility of no Amy Wormald (due to commitments with the Mermaids) Camperdown could find themselves in the top five after this round.
Umpire Appreciation Round
The HFNL are fortunate to have gained the services of Raechel Richards for our Umpire Appreciation Round on May 29th (Round 7). Raechel and Barb Cox are coming to our Region to conduct a “Rules Discussion” on Friday May 28th and to Mentor Umpires on May 29th. Raechel is the head umpire coach for State League this year. She is an AA badged umpire and was an allocations panel member for the Suncorp Season in 2020. We are very fortunate to have her visit our Region.
The Rules Discussion Session on Friday night will be compulsory for Umpires, Open Coaches, at least one other coach and some players from each Club. The venue for this session is still to be confirmed but it will most likely be at the Netball Stadium. On Saturday, May 29th as part of our Umpire Appreciation Round both Barb and Raechel will attend some venues to assist with Umpire Mentoring.
This is a fantastic opportunity and I’m very much looking forward hearing what expertise they have to share members of our league.
