Something old; something older. But at least it’s different. Here is an old match report from my netball playing days. Our department had a team called the Hospital Hot Shots (not my idea for a name) in the local indoor netball league for a number of seasons, a few years ago. We took turns writing the match report. Many thanks to Joe for mentioning these old reports: even though he never actually suggested I should reprint them, I’m sure that was the subtext.
—–Original Message—–
From: Kirsty Jordan [CCDHB]
Sent: Monday, 25 November 2013 9:53 p.m.
Subject: RE: Grading Game # 3
Hi Everyone,
Joe has delegated the task of writing this weeks match report to me as he needs a break to get his creative juices flowing again. I am happy to write the occasional report but unfortunately my powers of observation do not match my ability to waffle on cue, so probably for the best if others have a go, too. I seem to remember a report from Laura a while ago that was both informative and entertaining… For now though, my daughters want to me to hurry up so we can watch the rest of ” The Lord of the Rings “, so I’d better get on with it. Feel free to correct any factual errors.
As Joe mentioned below, he has again showed his skills as a talent scout by getting Sarah playing. She is as Elfishly tall as Joe and Jonny, and as it turns out, has previously played for the Otago under 21 team, so is a real find. She has played netball socially before ( Umm..Indoor? In Christchurch? ) and she says our league is much tougher! Her link to anaesthesia may be tenuous but as she is starting the vascular run as a housesurgeon hopefully she will be able to spend some time in theatre. Julia Taylor also came along to play tonight, she hasn’t played since Intermediate, as she refused to play for her high school “Z” team. She can rest assured that we have been independently assessed as being very high quality! The other players tonight were Laura, myself, Jonny, Joe and James. Tom seems to be still recovering from his first game a few weeks ago. Tonight was also James’s penultimate game, he is off to Nelson in a couple of weeks, and will be sadly missed, not least by Pip Brown, the nurse who works in dental, apparently. Everyone arrived on time which was very encouraging and made a nice change.
Our opposition were a team from the Penthouse cinema, hence P. house, a little in-joke, although they call themselves Phouse as in ” fowse “. Over my head. This is their first season. I felt it was only fair to reassure them, during my quarter off, that not all the referees were this obscure in their calls. The ref was our least favourite, who has a love of random, unpredictable and often physically impossible calls. The player I talked to was relieved by my explanation.
For some reason it was really hot on the court, in spite of the doors all being open. Joe said it was like hot yoga, I have to take his word for that though. I played defence then centre for the last half, Sarah was attack the whole game, Julia sat off for the first quarter then played defence for the rest of the game once she got a hang of the rules. Laura was centre and also I think defence? I think James was centre the whole game, and Joe and Jonny alternated as attack and defence. It was a hard and fast game, and the opposition had some good players, but their inexperience showed, and after the first quarter the score was 9:4, and we never looked back. The final score was 42:17. Having another tall and reliable goal shoot in Sarah allowed Joe and Jonny when they were on attack to spend more time out of the circle and moving the ball quickly down the court. Also with a healthy lead, there were more attempts at 2 pointers than is our usual pattern, and with the luck ( and talent ) going our way, a lot of them were going in – in particular James, Jonny and Sarah. Joe was even encouraging me to have a go when I was centre, but I was just pleased to have the opportunity to do more passing than I usually do. We discovered that our ref was much less likely to call you for stepping if you could catch and pass the ball while running in a fluid, balletic motion, rather than when you try the less confident looking stop, catch, pause, look around helplessly and then pass manoeuvre that is more typical of some of us. One of the opposition players got injured in the last half, she limped off with what looked like a foot or ankle injury, hopefully not too serious. They seemed like very nice people, there was no nastiness, they played well and moved the ball quickly, but seemed to be lacking in the goal scoring department.
Overall, a fun game, everyone played well against a team who were lovely but not up to our current surprisingly high standard. This was our last grading game, I think tomorrow we will find out what we will be doing for the rest of the season. Will await the update from Joe with interest. I’m guessing we will go up a grade, it will be sad to lose some our excellent regular players but with a crop of new players coming through hopefully we can continue to be competitive, and some of our more hobbit sized team members* will continue to have a place in the team.
See you next week,
Kirsty.
*me