Surrey Storm secured their second Vitality Netball Superleague win in 48 hours on Monday evening with a confident 45-58 victory over Team Northumbria live on Sky Sports.
The win sees Storm take a step towards securing a home semi-final, now sitting just 3 points behind Hertfordshire Mavericks who are 2nd.
Coach Kathryn Ratnapala named just one change in her side compared to the one that defeated Team Bath in round 8, replacing Katt Ainsworth with Amy Flanagan in a straight swap at WD.
It didn’t take Storm long to exert pressure on the Northumbria defence, taking a quick 1-5 lead thanks to some superb rebounding from captain Hannah Reid. Katy Holland matched this right on the quarter time buzzer to hand Surrey a 10-15 advantage.
An Amy Flanagan steal in Q2 gave Storm a 10 goal lead at 15-25 as a powerful Q2 showed the difference in quality between the two sides, with the visitors leading 21-31 at half time.
Coach Ratnapala looked to shake things up in Q3 with the introduction of Kat Hayes (GA) and Josie Huckle (GK), pushing Reid to GD, and it didn’t take long for the changes to bed in. Providing excellent support around the shooting circle, Georgia Lees fed ball after ball into Rachel Dunn and Pamela Cookey and the goals kept coming, giving Surrey a 30-44 lead at the end of the quarter.
Pressure on the Northumbria defence continued into Q4, forcing them to make numerous attacking errors, which was only compounded by further fresh legs on court with the arrival of both Yasmin Parsons (WA) and Mikki Austin (C). Battles in the mid-court started getting physical with the passion of both Austin and Nicole Dixon shining through but the one goal quarter win for the hosts wasn’t enough to prevent Storm from taking back-to-back wins and stepping closer to the Vitality Netball Superleague semi-finals.
Storm will now enjoy a short break in the fixture schedule before travelling to Leeds on Saturday 26th March to face the Yorkshire Jets (4pm centre-pass).
Watch Georgia Lees being selected as Sky Sports Player of the Match.
Read Sky Sports’ report including video highlights.
Storm starting 7:
GK – Reid
GD – Holland
WD – Flanagan
C – Candappa
WA – Lees
GA – Cookey
GS – Dunn
Changes for Storm: Hayes to GA, Reid to GD, Huckle to GK (Q3), Parsons to WA, Austin to C (Q4)
Northumbria starting 7:
GK – Kennedy
GD – Keenan
WD – Murphy
C – Dixon
GA – Semple
GS – Armitage
Changes for Northumbria: Keenen to GK, Kennedy to GD (Q2), Semple to GS, Beckford to GA, Grierson to WA, Hollingworth to WD (Q3)
Storm shooting stats:
Dunn – 34/38, 89%
Cookey – 17/19, 89%
Hayes – 7/8, 88%
Team – 58/65, 89%
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