Entertaining games

Competing for the ball: Waikohu's Humaria Higgins fights for possesion against GGHS's Judaea Phillips. Waikohu won their match against HSOG' last night 57-54 while GGHS' beat Horouta Gold 57-52.Picture by Paul Rickard

The premier grade netball in the Gisborne YMCA last night produced plenty of entertainment with bonus points awarded in both games such was the closeness of the scoring.

The first Pak'nSave premiership game was decided by five goals with GGHS Snr A beating Horouta Gold 57-52.

The game virtually went goal for goal for most of the match, with Horouta Gold leading by two at the first quarter.

Then Gillies Electrical GGHS Snr A slowly edged ahead in the second quarter and managed to stay in the lead for the remainder.

Both team's attackers were moving the ball into their shooters well and using the triangles on the edge of the goal circle to enable better positioning.

GGHS Snr A centre Te Arai Waihape played very well by linking both ends of the court, being available to collect passes and then delivering the right type of pass into her shooters.

In the fourth quarter, JT Contracting Horouta Gold tightened their defence and pressured the students into making little errors to enable them to pull back the 6-goal deficit to be only 1 goal behind — 50/49.

Instead of letting the game slip away from them the students settled themselves, stopped rushing the passes into their shooters and pulled ahead again. This was Girls' High senior A's first win this round and Horouta Gold earned a bonus point.

In the second match, Claydens Waikohu 1 nudged F45 High School Old Girls 57-54. HSOG led 19-17 after 15 minutes of the hour-long game, and at halftime they had a slender lead 32-31.

But Waikohu got their game going better in the third quarter and had worked their way into a 47-42 lead. It was a close game for the full hour and could have gone either way.

Both teams had passages of play where they moved the ball at speed through the court and looked like they would run away with the win and then other passages of play where they succumbed to the opposition's pressure and made errors.

All team members on both sides had to work hard on attack and defence.

The premier game in the ‘Y' on Saturday will see Claydens Waikohu 1 play Whangara Old Girls 1 at 9am.