By Tara Murray
The City West Falcons continued their strong start to the Victorian Netball League season with a third-straight 80 goal performance to remain undefeated.
The three-time reigning premiers have started the season in strong form and it was no different on Wednesday night against the Casey Demons.
The Falcons came away with an 80-62 win.
Coach Marg Lind was pretty happy with the performance.
“I think you’re always going to concede big goals to them, with Emma [Ryde] as she’s like Jane Cook at the other end,” she said.
“We were more focused on our scoreline which we were pretty happy with. I think we’re capable of around that 20 goals a quarter, [but] obviously there will be other teams that will make that difficult.
“Every time we’ve played them, they’ve scored a reasonable amount.”
Lind said they probably could have kept the Demons to a bit less on the scoreboard, but instead decided to continue rotating players through.
They had four players rotate in the defence circle, with Mel Oloamanu still out injured as well.
Lind said she thought Charity Nasalio got better as the game went on as she still learns to play against the likes of Ryde.
Sophie Hanrahan had a strong period in the second half of the game, while Lucia Fauonuku came on at wing defence and started to impact on the centre pass.
Lind said offensively she thought they did really well and were pretty good across the whole game.
Jane Cook shot 65 goals from 66 attempts.
“We can’t complain,” Lind said.
The Falcons were still without Uneeq Palavi. With Eleanor Cardwell to miss several weeks for the Melbourne Mavericks, the Falcons could be without Palavi, a Mavericks training partner, for even longer.
The Falcons are now 3-0 with a number of challenges coming up, including the Bendigo Strikers, Geelong Cougars and Boroondara Express.
Lind said they weren’t getting ahead of themselves despite the strong start,
The Falcons 23 and unders suffered their first loss of the season, losing 52-51.
It was a frustrating match to watch, with the Falcons hitting the lead late before conceding it.
“They started off too slow,” Lind said. “The defenders were a foot off, took a whole half to get into it.
“I thought the change of Matilda [McIntyre] on made a difference and made them more dynamic on the line.
“But then we stopped again.”
Lind said they made way too many errors across the whole game and were throwing away turnovers.
