A vastly improved full-court defence won the Silver Ferns their first netball test against England in Auckland on Monday, but standout goal defence Sheryl Scanlan still sees a real need for improvement.
She knows England are smarting from the huge 65-26 loss and expects them to come out fighting in Wednesday’s second test in Dunedin.
“We don’t expect England to be playing the same as they did in Auckland – they’ll have taken a lot from that game,” Scanlan said.
“We’re expecting them to come out firing, there’s no way they are going to lay down and give it to us on a plate. We’ll really have to execute our own game plan, focus strongly on what we want to do on attack and defence.”
After two losses to Australia last week – the first by a scant three goals, the second by 10 – the English were quietly confident they could repeat last year’s 50-45 win over the Silver Ferns.
That conviction was rudely shattered in the first five minutes of Monday’s test, as the New Zealanders’ superiority on defence and attack shot them out to an early 8-1 lead.
England never recovered from that hammer blow start, trailing 7-16 after 15 minutes and 12-30 at halftime. The second half brought a slight improvement, but New Zealand led 47-18 with 15 minutes to go and maintained pressure right to the final whistle.
Some outstanding circle defence from inimitable goal keep Casey Williams and Scanlan in the first half especially laid the groundwork for the win.
England had been confident goal attack Pam Cookey, unavailable for the Australian leg of the tour, would boost their attack force enough to really threaten the New Zealanders.
But Cookey could manage only three goals from 10 attempts over the first 45 minutes, and ended the match disconsolate on the sideline for the final quarter.
England’s new coach, Australian Sue Hawkins was unstinting in her praise of the New Zealand defensive effort.
“Pam said she didn’t feel comfortable out there, but she couldn’t really pinpoint why. Well, Sheryl Scanlan really worked hard on her, she did a great job,” Hawkins told NZPA.
“It’s not silly to say the Silver Ferns’ defence end stepped up and did the job on us – I’m not afraid to say that.”
Scanlan, who was replaced for the second half by the equally effective Leana de Bruin, said the margin of Monday’s win came as something of a surprise.
“We definitely didn’t expect that kind of scoreline, the only thing we wanted to do was execute our game plan.
“But the amount of pressure we put on them on defence was just awesome and it created ball for our defence to come through. Our attacking end was getting intercepts as well, which was really encouraging.”
The third test in the series is scheduled for Palmerston North on Saturday.
NZPA
