Poor shooting statistics marred an otherwise excellent performance from Harcourts in their regional superleague division one netball match against St Marys Old Girls at Wellington Girls College on Saturday. The hotly favoured SMOG won by 57-37 but Harcourts player-coach Kelly Sargent was quick to reflect that her team had missed nofewer than 26 attempts at goal. That during the course of a match which saw them trailing by just three goals at the end of the first quarter and also at halftime and by six goals at the end of the third quarter. "I'm not saying we should have won but we certainly should have been a lot closer," Sargent said "We missed too many easy goals, that was all there was to it." The player Sargent came down hardest on in her after-match assessment was none other than herself. She was forced from the court with a knee injury going into the last quarter but made no bones about how she saw her own performance in the shooting role before then. "Honestly I was crap, and that's being kind," she said. "If you think the coach should be setting an example ... well, I can tell you I came up short there. I was seriously poor and I want you to say that because it's true." An injury to regular wing attack Carlene Karaitiana late last week meant Harcourts had to make changes to their usual starting line-up with Sargent initially pairing with youngster Waimarama Phillips at shooter and Geraldine Carroll moving from there to play wing attack. Then after the first quarter Sargent and Carroll were in the shooting roles with Emma Foote going from wing defence to wing attack and Amy Lucas joining the action at wing defence. The speed and accuracy with which Harcourts moved the ball through the midcourt delighted Sargent with centre Katie Wyeth and the versatile Foote outstanding in that respect. And Sargent was also pleased with the tenaciousness shown by Te Ata Phillips and Elena Heggie on defence. "They (SMOG) had some pretty tall timber but we managed to get some good tips and intercepts, we defended really well," she said. Coach Sargent said the biggest plus from Saturday's game, however, was that Harcourts had shown they could be competitive even against the main contenders for the division one title. "We went out there determined to show the country cousins were up to it and I thought we did that," she said.
