Three Waikato teams make top four in Super 12 netball

Rachel Beale at GK for Verdettes Marist calls for ball while being defended by Fiesola Puamau at GS for Uni. Photo / Supplied

The Super 12 competition (previously known as Super 14) is made up of the top one, two or three senior premier club teams from five netball regions within the upper North Island. Regions include North, Auckland, Waitakere, Counties Manukau and Waikato.

The teams were divided into two pools with pool A consisting of Collegiate, Commodores (North), Carlton (Auckland), Aztec (Counties Manukau), Hustlers (Waitakere) and Marist Verdettes (Waikato).

Pool B consisted of Waikato University, Fraser Tech (Waikato), New Jaks (Waitakere), Manurewa Rugby, Mellons Bay (Counties Manukau) and Shore Rovers (North).

Round robin games amongst the pools started on March 16 with the final game being played on April 20.

After the end of pool play Collegiate was top of pool A with Marist Verdettes second and University was top of pool B with Fraser Tech second. This is an outstanding result for the Waikato region with three teams in the top four.

The semi-finals were played on April 27 across two indoor venues, Fraser Tech High School in Hamilton and Onewa Domain in Auckland and saw the top of pool A playing the second ranked team in pool B and the top of pool B playing the second ranked team in pool A.

The semi-final between University and Marist Verdettes was competitive in the first half but in the second half University dominated. At the end of the first quarter University had a five goals lead and this was increased at half time to eight goals.

By three quarters University led by 15 goals. The final score was 61 goals to 36. University went from strength to strength with changes being made to the team line up each quarter to good effect.

Of the shooters, young Eden Anderson in the second half at goal attack and then goal shoot was a standout showing maturity and style under pressure.

At the opposite end of the court Rachael Fabling at goal defence and Amy Christophers at goal keep combined well resulting in turnover ball and rebounds.

Marist played a solid and consistent game and despite an early injury to one of their defenders and being low on reserves they remained in the hunt with some nice phases of play particularly during the first half.

Alix Boe at centre and then goal defence played a great game including getting a number of turnovers but this was not able to always be converted.

The other semi-final between Collegiate and Fraser Tech was overall a similar game with the first half quite close and then Collegiate dominating in the second half. The half time score was 27 goals to 20 to Collegiate and the fulltime score was 59 goals to 36.

The final, between University and Collegiate, will be played on Sunday May 6 at Papakura.

The final will be a repeat from the past three years and Collegiate will be looking for their fourth consecutive win and University will be wanting to break this.