By Russell Bennett
WEST GIPPSLAND FOOTBALL NETBALL COMPETITION
REVIEW – ROUND 1 (SPLIT ROUND)
The West Gippsland Football Netball Competition’s two biggest powerhouse netball sides have showed no signs of slowing down, with Dalyston and Korumburra-Bena both displaying their ruthless streaks in clinical wins over Kilcunda Bass and Nar Nar Goon respectively on Saturday.
Bass has welcomed Lucy Monahan back into the fold this season in her capacity as A Grade player-coach.
Not only is she a highly-accomplished netballer, but she’s also precisely the sort of person the Panthers have been looking for to build around and to lead them into the future.
But Panthers fans will need to be patient. That build could be an extensive one.
The Magpies and Giants are by far the class of the competition, with the likes of Phillip Island nipping at their heels.
The Magpies restricted the Panthers to just 10 goals at Hade Avenue on Saturday, and by stark contrast gun Dalyston shooter Britt Thomas netted a whopping 46 of her own in the visitors’ 53-goal win, 63-10.
The back-to-back premiers will teach plenty of opposition sides lessons throughout the season – and those will often be brutal ones – but the best thing the likes of Bass can do is learn from them; to examine what Dalyston does so well, and try to emulate it.
The Magpies’ fiercest rivals, meanwhile, showed they will again by right there when the whips are cracking at the business end of this season – just like they have been so often in campaigns past.
The Gooners entered the WGFNC’s inaugural season last year as one of the sides to watch from the northern end (the five former Ellinbank and District Netball Association clubs) but they experienced first-hand just how clinical the likes of the Giants and Magpies are.
On Saturday, the Giants delivered another stark reminder of their top-notch talent, storming to a 36-goal win over the Goon – 63-27.
In the other game of the day on Saturday, Bunyip predictably proved far too strong for their local rival Garfield, which is embarking on a rebuild of its own.
The Yips got off to the perfect start under new coach Jodie Hanssen, and despite a host of new faces stormed to a massive 62-goal win, 73-11.
Last week, on the opening day of the season down at Cowes, the girls from Phillip Island quickly re-established themselves as a force to be reckoned with, snaring a 17-goal victory over Kooweerup in front of a massive Easter weekend at the tourist hotspot.
As a testament to how strong Phillip Island’s numbers had been through the pre-season, the club had to cut roughly 10 players following its tryout process.
Though they were soundly beaten in the end, the girls from Kooweerup, too, still have much to be upbeat about at the start of their campaign under new coach Scott Eastwood.
In the other game of Easter Saturday on the first day of the Round 1 split round, Inverloch Kongwak got its season off on the right foot with a 17-goal win over Cora Lynn at Inverloch, 49-32.
