Tara Murray
The Sunbury Lions are on the right track in the Ballarat Netball League.
After not fielding an A-grade side last season, the Lions are sitting 2-3 as they head into their first bye of the season.
Two of those losses have been to last season’s grand finalists, North Ballarat and Darley, and within five goals.
Lions coach Kim Bailey said after the loss to the Devils they were happy with how it was going so far.
“We haven’t trained together,” she said. “We’ll get a session in and have a look at each other.
“We lost by five goals to North without ever playing together and then last week was a bit of an abnormality, we had a bad game.
“Darley played really well, it was really hard to stop their shooter.
“We’re competitive and I’m expecting to make finals and who knows from there. We’ll keep getting stronger and stronger, week by week.”
On Saturday, the Lions pushed Darley all the way in the 45-42 loss.
For large parts of the game, the Lions had control but couldn’t push the margin beyond two goals.
Changes to the Devils line up in the third quarter started to pay off and they took the lead heading into the final quarter.
The margin got out to as many as five, but the Lions wouldn’t give up but they couldn’t get enough turnovers when needed.
Bailey said while you never like to lose a match, it was a good performance.
“They are a good team,” she said. “It was hard to stop their goalers, they played really well.
“We threw some ball away we probably mostly shouldn’t have and were a little bit undisciplined.
“We will regroup. We’ve now got a break next week with the bye, come out fighting against Bacchus [Marsh] the next week.”
Bailey said some of the turnovers caused were from the team’s inexperience together.
She said with a young goal shooter in Lani Fauonuku it was always going to take some time. Fauonuku shot 33 goals on Saturday.
“Lani is still a young girl,” Bailey said. “There will be some turnover ball from that, we know that.
“We’ve never played together before, we’re still learning each other’s combinations, others style.”
The Falcons were also limited with minute restrictions to some of their Victorian Netball League players.
Georgia Hellyer was limited to a quarter, while Lucia Fauonuku missed the game as she recovers from a small injury.
It meant the Lions had to play Ruth Smith in wing defence for the first half. Smith is more known as a goaler or a wing attack.
Bailey said it was just the nature of what they had to deal with due to having VNL players.
The Lions sit in sixth spot with a bye this week.
