Guaranteed funnier and more relatable than my last post!*
From: Kirsty Jordan
Sent: Monday, 15 December 2014 9:25 p.m.
To: Hospital Hot Shots
Subject: Match report
Hi All,
It is my privilege to present to you this, the final match report of the year. I actually volunteered to write it, I felt so bad for sitting out the last quarter.
Our opponents were Sudden Impact, the team who are coming second in our grade, after us. Well, there are only four in the grade – by the way, Joe said something tonight about the possibility of the grades getting shuffled later in the season, which might be quite nice considering most of our games haven’t been particularly challenging. Sudden Impact are the team who have a few energetic ex-basketball players who show a lot of promise. Our team tonight was myself, Joe, Sarah, Jenny, Romilla, the lovely James back from a year in Nelson ( where he played no netball at all – it didn’t show, though, James! ), plus the late addition of Andy who kindly agreed to come early to play for us when we had some last minute unavailability. Andy’s team were playing straight after us, this did lead to some confusion from his regular team mates when they spotted him already playing when they got there. Andy couldn’t be there for the first quarter but this turned out to not be a problem as our opposition couldn’t be there either. We were all by ourselves on the court when match start time came and went. Apparently Joe suggested we play a quick game of three a side but unfortunately no one heard him. There was a rumour that our opposition were late due to a car accident, which made their team name rather unfortunate, but luckily they all appeared just as the first quarter time was nearly up. Joe and I were in D, Romilla and James in C and Jenny and Sarah in attack. Our ref ( the short guy, can’t remember his name but he was OK ) made us play through the first break into the second quarter, to optimise our time on the court. It was hot hot hot on the court after another scorching Wellington day (well, the second of the Summer after yesterday). Andy was off the second quarter so was able to follow up his wonderful email of hints and tips for playing defence with more timely and useful feedback. How have I managed to play for over a year and not known this stuff? Have felt terrifically inspired my last few games so thanks again, Andy. Happy to forward the email to anyone who wants it. Whatever the reason for the late appearance of our opponents, they still got docked 5 points for it, which always seems a little harsh. Their tactic for scoring was to go for two pointers. They had a pretty good strike rate but our old strategy of safe and secure one pointers kept us in front. At the start of the game I convinced Romilla to let me play defence by promising to take over centre for the second half of the game. Of course the first quarter didn’t count, so then I said we could swap for the last quarter. Unfortunately I was so knackered by then I had to play the old lady card in order to attain my rightful place on the bench. I could see Romilla was rather saddened by my duplicity, and hence my writing the match report. In fact, the last quarter the opposition started to bounce back, and in fact won it comfortably. The final score was 32:18, so without the 5 point lead could well have been quite challenging – certainly more so than our last two games. The basketball players threw themselves round the court and made some amazing intercepts. One female was particularly solid on defence. They also seem like really nice people.
So, there we go. Thanks everyone for a great game, am feeling really upbeat about netball at the moment. Have a great Xmas and a Happy New Year, our first game back is I think the 5th of January.
Kirsty.
*not an actual guarantee