By Tara Murray
Gisborne is starting to fine tune things ahead of a big back end of the Bendigo Netball League season.
The two-time reigning premiers are again in the mix in the top five and will be a threat come finals time.
Having yet to play their best netball, coach Tarryn Rymer said they would be busy working on those connections.
“We lost to South Bendigo a couple of weeks ago and we took some learnings from that,” she said.
“We always seem to lose to them over the years. It was nice to build on some connections.”
The biggest plus for the Bulldogs is the return of Claudia Mawson and Zoe Davies.
Both were involved in the SN reserves competition, while Mawson missed the early part of the season through injury.
Rymer said both added a lot of depth to the side and opened up some more options, not only at both ends of the court but in the midcourt.
“They add so much depth,” she said. “Zoe is relentless in her ability to win the ball, while Claudia is so patient.
“Torie [Skrijel] and Sheridan [Townrow] have done very well in goals and Torie has had her opportunity to play at goal attack.
“We can now play Claudia at wing attack not only in the goals.”
On Saturday, the Bulldogs beat Eaglehawk, 53-18.
Rymer said it wasn’t their best performance but they were still able to come away with a convincing win.
“We chipped away slowly,” she said. “We still made a high error count than usual.
“That happens when you haven’t played together for a while. The ball placement wasn’t there at times.
“We’ll work on that in the next couple of weeks.”
With the interleague bye this weekend and then having the following weekend off with Castlemaine not having a team, the Bulldogs have just five games remaining.
Rymer said it was annoying to have two weekends off in a row, but with several players involved in the Victorian Netball League, it gave them a chance to reset before finals.
“I was looking that there were only five games to go and thinking how has that happened,” she said.
“We play Sandhurst twice in the run home and still have to play Strathfieldsaye, having already played them twice.”
Rymer said all their other sides were well placed heading into the back part of the year, with all teams sitting in the top five.
