BEATEN BY THE BELL

Jumper Ants were slow to find their feet in the first quarter with Shooting Starz following some good set pieces which took them into the lead but as time went on and the teams moved into the second quarter Jumpers revived their play with some good connections between Mae Peet and Rosella White in the shooting circle as Rosella potted a flurry of goals one after the other taking Jumpers into the lead.

Captain Sarah Charlton (GD) and Mollie Watts at Goal Keeper tightened up in the circle third quarter and were backed up well by Charlene at Wing defence as Jumpers continued to dominate and pushed through centre court with some confident link up play from Tora in centre position but Starz made some positional changes and slowly edged back in contention as Jumoers just held the lead. The second half saw Erin come into Goal Attack and she played some very intelligent netball.

The last quarter was slow to start again (over the required 3 minutes break) as the Starz umpire was distracted off court - this turned out to be fatal for Jumpers as Starz clawed back some goals and just edged into a 1 goal lead as there were six more minutes to play - but the full time bell rang to end all games on court which meant Jumpers - who were just about to shoot another goal which would have pulled them Level were literally beaten by the bell!! The Starz umpire offered to continue to full time but thus isn't possible under the league rules with the central floodlighting being switched off. This was so disappointing for Jumpers who had played a very competent game showing their resilience and capability of pulling back to take the lead and the rematch will be very interesting and definitely timed strictly!
A lesson learned
Man of Match: Shared between Mae Peet and Erin Marsh (congratulations)